He's Given Up!! ( Archived) (30)

Hi Alison - Ive just found a petition about this in my inbox - am going to post it

Jan Raath in Harare
Even as Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, was making his announcement that would turn Zimbabwe’s bloody elections into a one-man race, hordes of President Mugabe’s youth militia were hard at work in Epworth, a crowded, chaotic township on Harare’s southern outskirts.

“They were forcing people out of their houses, beating them to go to the rally,” said Kennedy Dzuwa, a black-market fuel dealer. “They wanted to get every person in Epworth there. Mugabe was coming. It has never been so bad.”

And it has been very bad in Epworth every day for the past five weeks. Zanu (PF) has been working methodically through each house, area by area, subjecting every person they suspect of supporting the MDC - which is about 80 per cent of Epworth’s adult population - to a humiliating beating.

“Every morning from nine until five,” said the thin, reserved woman of 34 who called herself Tambudzwa.

“Even old man. Even pregnant woman.”

It is punishment for having voted for the MDC in the March elections, and to ensure that they “vote correctly” for Mr Mugabe in the run-off vote, which the ruling party insists will go ahead as planned on Friday. The systematic, ritual brutality is reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Tambudzwa and her lodger were dragged out of her house last Wednesday morning, with her daughter, Sipiwe, aged 15 months, strapped to her back.

Her husband, Victor, had fled the week before, believing the women would be unharmed.

They were marched with a raucous crowd of Zanu (PF) youths armed with sticks, to near the dam in Epworth, where the militia base is situated. They were ordered to sit down, and a man in a Zanu (PF) T-shirt and neckerchief in the Zanu (PF) colours of red, green, yellow and black read out numbers of houses in the area.

“When they read out your house number, it is because you are MDC. You have to go and sit in front, separate from everyone else.”

Zanu (PF)’s knowledge of how anyone voted in a genuinely secret ballot in March, is simple. So few people voted for Zanu (PF) that their identities are well known to the authorities. It is assumed that everybody else voted for the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai.

“Then one man reads out the names of the MDC people,” said Tambudzwa. “One by one, they come to the front and they have to lie on the ground on their stomachs. Then they are beaten, for about five minutes, on their backs. The women cry. The men grunt.

“They use a heavy stick they have broken from a tree. They use all their force, with two hands. And after they have been beaten, they have to stand up and give the Zanu (PF) fist salute. Then they have to say, ‘Pamberi ne-Mugabe. Ndadzoka ku Zanu (PF) [Forward with Mugabe. I am back with Zanu (PF)]’.”

Then they go and sit down again and the next one’s name is called.” The affair was punctuated with slogan chanting and singing, including one song with the words, “Tsvangirai is HIV positive”, she said.

In spite of the calculated terror, when people returned to their seats after the beating, she said, “they were whispering secretly to each other . . . They will never vote for Zanu (PF)”.

There is no way of avoiding a beating. Women with babies had to hand them over to other women. “The babies were crying. We had to sit there all day, not allowed to get up, no water, no food, no toilet, in the sun. No feeding babies, no changing nappies.

“Sipiwe was crying, she was scared, she was saying, ‘Mummy, look, they are being beaten’,” said Tambudzwa. “She was vomiting. I asked one of the youth if I could take her away. He said, ‘I don’t care about your baby’.”

Chance intervened at about 2pm, by which time more than a hundred people had been flogged, she said. A Zanu (PF) vehicle arrived with bundles of T-shirts and the youths forgot their duties in the scramble for a free handout. Tambudzwa and scores of others scattered.

Sipiwe now cries when the radio is turned up loud, or anyone shouts. She is subdued and clings to her mother. “She is not friendly any more,” Tambudzwa said.

She abandoned her home that night, leaving the door locked with all the family’s goods inside, in the knowledge that she was told at the meeting that if she escaped, her home would be destroyed.

They are now refugees in a middle-class suburb.

just found this Sparky;

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor The Guardian, Tuesday June 24, 2008

The UN condemned Zimbabwe last night for intimidation and called for the presidential vote due on Friday to be scrapped.

A draft security council resolution placed the blame for the withdrawal of the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on the Mugabe government, accusing it of "a campaign of violence" that had "denied its political opponents the right to campaign freely".

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, spoke out against the government's actions in strong terms. He said Tsvangirai had been right to withdraw, and free elections would not now be possible. "There has been too much violence, too much intimidation," Ban said.

He added that if Friday's vote went ahead, it "would only deepen divisions within the country and produce a result that cannot be credible".

Ban's intervention and the security council draft statement marked a sharp increase in pressure on Mugabe's government, and opened the door for the first time to direct UN involvement in the crisis.

The draft council statement went one step further, saying the results of the first round of elections in March, which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change won, "must be respected", and called on the government to cooperate with international mediation efforts.

Urgent negotiations were also under way last night between the UN, the African Union and southern African leaders on the creation of a mediation team to send to Zimbabwe. If agreement is reached, a joint team with representatives of the UN, the AU and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) would assume the mediator role until now played by the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, alone. There were reports that Mbeki will head to Zimbabwe today for a last ditch attempt to encourage dialogue between the antagonists, though the South African authorities did not confirm this.

The UN moves represent diplomatic victories for Britain, the US and France, who spent much of yesterday lobbying other world powers not to recognise Mugabe's continued presidency.

"The international community must send a powerful and united message: that we will not recognise the fraudulent election rigging and the violence and intimidation of a criminal and discredited cabal," Gordon Brown told parliament.

In the next two days, the leaders of Angola, Tanzania and Swaziland, who take a lead role in security issues in SADC, are due to meet in the Angolan capital, Luanda. The meeting suggests some of the group may be ready to act without Mbeki, who has emerged as Mugabe's protector on the continent.

The AU yesterday signalled that it was prepared to take action. The chairman of the AU commission, Jean Ping, said: "One of the preconditions is that this violence against the people must be stopped." Tsvangirai's withdrawal and "the increasing acts of violence in the run-up to the second round of the presidential election are a matter of grave concern", Ping said.

AU officials were seeking to agree a common approach before an African summit at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt this week.

The joint UN-AU-SADC team being negotiated yesterday would seek to hammer out agreement between Mugabe and the MDC for a national unity government, or else move for new elections. Tanzania and Kenya suggest new elections could be overseen by AU or Sadc peacekeepers.

Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, who led a successful mediation mission to Kenya earlier this year, backed a similar initiative. "The situation in Zimbabwe imposes a grave responsibility on the AU and the UN, which they should assume," Annan said in a statement. "Zimbabwe cannot do it alone."

Britain focused its diplomatic efforts on convincing other capitals that the MDC be treated as the only entity with political legitimacy. "Our objectives are to get in every forum possible a recognition that today President Mugabe no longer remains the proper, rightful leader of the country," Mark Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister, told reporters.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, also stepped up the pressure, saying Mugabe's government could no longer be considered legitimate.