Political Violence Surges Ahead of Zimbabwe Vote

A gang of youths grabbed Trymore Midzi one night in December as he was walking home. They ferried him to a secret location and, using sticks, stones, knives, iron bars and bicycle chains, they tortured him.

Mangled and writhing in pain, the 24-year-old was found the next morning, dumped in a yard near his family’s home in Bindura, 54 miles north of this capital city.

Midzi was hospitalized with a severe head injury, a broken arm and leg, and a horrific trail of wounds from his skull to the soles of his feet. He died a week later.

His assailants told him his crime was simple: He was a regional chairman for the youth league of the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party. Led by Morgan Tsvangirai, a former trade boss, the party is presenting the most formidable challenge ever to the 22-year rule of President Robert Mugabe and his party in elections this weekend.

The day after Midzi was buried, his uncle was slain, apparently because he visited the grave. Pro-government militants chased his family members from their home and warned them that they would be killed if they returned.

“I feel angry. I cry every day,” said Sylvia Chikuwanyanga, 42, Midzi’s mother. “They killed two people in my family, and now they are staying in my home. What am I going to do with my family?”

The tale of Midzi’s family is not unique. The Movement for Democratic Change says at least 107 of its members and supporters have been killed in political violence in the last two years. Hundreds of others have been tortured, raped or forced to flee their homes.

Local human rights groups, political commentators and foreign aid organizations say militant ruling party supporters are pursuing a campaign of terror to scare people away from voting, or into voting for their group. Mugabe himself has been accused of condoning attacks on civilians and of using the police and the judiciary to advance his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF.

Government officials have denied that there has been any large-scale violence and have blamed Movement for Democratic Change supporters for instigating attacks. At a rally in Harare on Sunday, Mugabe called on supporters to refrain from violence. “There must be peace,” he said. “We must vote peacefully. We have a tradition here of democracy.”

But concern has mounted as a stream of recent incidents indicates that the bulk of the violence has been organized.

“When it started two years ago, it was just random injuries,” said Dr. Frances Lovemore of Armani Trust, a Harare-based group that provides medical treatment and other aid to victims of violence. “Now there is a pattern of systematic torture.”

Lovemore said that in the last several weeks she has treated burned and branded skin, ruptured eardrums caused by blows to the head, facial cuts and bruises, beaten soles, and buttocks hit until they were raw. Sexual assaults also are increasing, she said.

A recent report by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, a local rights umbrella group, said that in most cases, victims have been abducted and taken to bases where they are tortured, then released. The bases--places such as school halls and community centers--are believed to number at least two dozen, the report said, and ZANU-PF youth brigades allegedly gather at these sites to stage attacks on opposition supporters. Statements from victims increasingly indicate that the youth militias involved in the violence appear to have received formal training in methods of torment, the report said.

“If this isn’t state terrorism, then there is no definition of state terrorism that succinctly describes what is going on,” said the Rev. Tim Neill, an Anglican priest who runs the Harare-based Zimbabwe Community Development Trust, which assists victims of violence. “No government should ever train its young people to attack its own citizens.”

Lovemore said her group has been treating five to 20 victims of violence a day, a significant increase since the beginning of the year. At least 95% of the victims said they were tortured for supporting the opposition party, she said.

Neill said at least 100 victims of political violence have been referred to his organization each week for assistance. But humanitarian aid workers acknowledge that many victims know their assailants and are afraid to report their abuse to the police. In other instances, the authorities have simply ignored complaints.

“I know the men who killed my brother,” Roy Midzi, 20, said as he recalled how a mob of youths attacked friends and relatives at his brother’s grave. “They also wanted to kill me and my dad. They were shouting, ‘You are going to die [in the same way] as we did to your brother!’ ”

The family reported the case to the police, but the men have never been questioned, much less charged, he said.

In recent months, new laws have put curbs on political gatherings, free speech and the right to strike. The Movement for Democratic Change said that since the beginning of the year, 83 of its rallies have been canceled largely because of police interference and disruptions by ZANU-PF militants. And opposition officials have constantly been harassed.

Mary Mubaiwa, 26, an opposition party worker in Harare, spent five nights in jail with her month-old son last week for participating in a party meeting. While she was in prison, ZANU-PF militiamen went looking for her husband, an opposition party board member. He heard them coming and fled his house. They burned it down, but not before stealing the family’s life savings, piles of opposition fliers and several party cards. The visibly shaken family now lives at a safe house in Harare.

“I am willing to go and vote, but I am frightened because [ZANU-PF militias] have said that if they see me there, they are going to kill me,” said Charles Mubaiwa, 30.

His wife has already been disenfranchised because government supporters recently confiscated her identification card--a prerequisite for casting a vote.

That tactic is being widely employed in rural areas, human rights monitors said, as youth brigades roam the countryside seizing the identity documents of people they suspect of supporting the opposition.

Violence in the countryside has spiraled since March 2000, when ruling-party militants and veterans of Zimbabwe’s independence war began occupying commercial farms owned by whites, who hold about 70% of the country’s best farmland. Mugabe’s government has targeted about 5,000 such farms for redistribution to largely landless blacks.

Although many white farmers have been forced to flee, black farm laborers have borne the brunt of the torment. Hundreds have been forced out of their homes and away from their voting areas.

Scores now live in barns, and many said they were ordered to attend meetings arranged by ruling-party supporters. If they failed to pledge allegiance to ZANU-PF, they said, they were beaten.

“Right now, I’m afraid to go and vote, because how can I vote [like] I really want to?” said William, 42, a farm manager in the eastern region of Marondera who has been forced to take refuge in a barn with 180 other laborers. He refused to give his last name for fear of retribution.

Despite the fear, a degree of defiance has arisen. Many people said they had purchased ZANU-PF party cards to ensure their protection but would ultimately vote for the opposition. Others said that being assaulted had simply increased their determination to fight for their beliefs.

“Beating me is only going to make me braver,” said a tractor driver known as Big Boy who was displaced from a farm in Marondera. “And I’m not going to vote for someone who beats me.”