Mugabe Backers Ambush Political Rival’s Followers

Hundreds of followers of President Robert Mugabe ambushed people leaving an election campaign rally Sunday where opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai vowed to end a “reign of terror” if he took power.

The militants, armed with clubs and stones, also threw rocks at cars leaving Chinhoyi, Mugabe’s hometown, including one that observers from the Southern African Development Community said was carrying members of their election monitoring team.

As soon as Tsvangirai left the stadium in Chinhoyi, more than 500 supporters of Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, party swarmed the exit and attacked sympathizers of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.

The attack occurred in full view of foreign observers who are here for the March 9-10 election.

“The violence is likely to continue right up until the day before elections,” said Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, a coalition of civic groups.

Tsvangirai is mounting the strongest challenge Mugabe has faced since taking power on independence from Britain in 1980.

He accuses the president of intimidation and planning to rig the vote, criticisms echoed by the United States and European Union, which have imposed personal sanctions on Mugabe and his inner circle. The EU pulled out its election monitors last week.

Police dispersed the ZANU-PF crowd at Chinhoyi stadium. But militants later regrouped along the road leading out of the town toward the capital, Harare, hurling rocks at motorists and smashing windows of at least three cars.

Tsvangirai said the ruling party was acting like “animals.”

“We will not allow [them] to run around the country like wild animals,” the MDC leader told the rally in Chinhoyi, a ZANU-PF stronghold. “[Mugabe] wants to be the only choice, and he wants to achieve that even through his reign of terror.

“We are going to inherit a country in a mess, a country that has been raped by political violence.”

Chinhoyi, about 70 miles northwest of Harare, was the scene of fighting last August when Mugabe’s supporters forcibly seized white-owned farms as part of the president’s controversial land-reform program.

Other observers from southern Africa have said a wave of political violence threatened chances for a free and fair vote.

Last week, two South Africans were trapped in an MDC office by 200 pro-government militants armed with stones and iron bars in the first incident involving election monitors.

They were not hurt, but the MDC said five of its supporters were injured in the attack and more than 100 had been killed since last February, when the farm seizures began.