Mugabe the manic: Daily Mail re****ter goes undercover in Zimbabwe to
find an electoral genocide the world is ignoring
Daily Mail, UK
By PETER OSBORNE - Last updated at 01:26am on 15th May 2008
Robert Mugabe's paid assassins came hunting for 22-year-old Memory, a
married mother-of-two.
They burst into her home, seized her and her children, and took them to
their tem****ary headquarters in the local village school.
Four men held down her arms and legs, while a fifth gripped her head,
placing his hands over her mouth to prevent her screams being heard.
Two others, wielding heavy wooden poles, then took turns to thrash her on
the buttocks in a beating that lasted half an hour.
I saw Memory in her hospital bed after she had been brought in from the
bush
more dead than alive a week ago last Monday, several days after her
beating.
She was lying on her front: it was obvious why.
Where her buttocks should have been was just a mess of raw flesh.
I watched as a blue-suited nurse removed one of the bandages.
Memory whimpered and moaned with pain. With me was a hardened welfare
worker
who had witnessed many terrible things.
She broke down in sobs. I must tell you that tears poured down my cheeks,
too.
Memory was in far too much pain and shock to answer any questions.
I pressed her hand gently and left her.
The following day, I returned to the hospital and saw Memory's beautiful
face and, since her pain was beginning to subside, heard her sweet, low
voice for the first time.
She told me how on arrival at the school (which she had attended as a
child), she had been ordered to sit in the playground with a group of
sup****ters of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - the
opposition party led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
On the dot of 8am, the beatings started. Groups of eight people at a time
were ordered out for treatment at the hands of a band of around 200
members
of Robert Mugabe's militia, each wearing Zanu-PF T-****rts and green, red
and
yellow bandanas signifying the national flag.
Many of them were high on drink or drugs.
She watched as four of her close friends were beaten and kicked to death.
A
fifth friend later died, and others remain unaccounted for.
The militiamen chanted songs and spat insults at Morgan Tsvangirai as they
did their work.
They told Memory, whose farmer husband was away: "You and your husband are
MDC members so we must beat you.' They said that she belonged 'to a
party of
animals".
Memory told me how she could hear her children screaming "Mamma, Mamma,
Mamma!" during her beating. They were held back by female members of
Zanu-PF.
Later, Memory was ordered to sit for two hours on her wounds. Mugabe's
thugs
told her she would be thrashed again if she moved a muscle.
'We spent the day without eating or water in the hot sun,' she told me.
"If
we asked for water, they said: "Get your water from Tsvangirai." "
Believe it or not, just by being alive, Memory is one of the lucky ones.
She is just one of tens of thousands of victims of the campaign of
violence
launched by Robert Mugabe after he comprehensively lost the presidential
elections on March 29.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has agreed to contest a new runoff
against Mugabe, even though he knows he won outright in the first round
and
accuses Zanu-PF of blatant vote-rigging.
A stand-off over the MDC's demand for international observers and media to
be given full access to ensure the vote is free and fair has brought
matters
to a standstill.
The decision last night to delay the poll until the end of July raised the
terrifying spec-tre of Mugabe's Green Bomber youth militia carrying on
their
reign of terror for ten more weeks.
An MDC spokesman said last night the law change was "illegal and unfair".
Shamefully, as a result of the standoff, the world's attention has ****fted
away.
Now, with the focus no longer on him, Mugabe is free to continue this
unprecedented campaign of electoral cleansing.
For the past week, having slipped into Zimbabwe as a businessman, I have
seen the relentless increase in intimidation from government forces.
I can re****t that every day it is reaching a new level of intensity,
sweeping like a killer virus through the country.
Even by Mugabe's standards, the scale and brutality is horrifying.
It's the worst seen since he ordered genocide in the west of Zimbabwe 25
years ago, when some 20,000 people were killed in an attempt to eradicate
all political opposition.
The world turned a blind eye then. Tragically, it is doing so again now.
And make no mistake: there is nothing spontaneous about these attacks.
They have all been carefully and deliberately planned by Mugabe, his
loathsome deputy Emerson Mnangagwa and the 15 or so senior military police
and intelligence officers in the Joint Operation Command (JOC) which now
runs Zimbabwe.
Their intention is to intimidate the sup****ters of the opposition so that
they either cannot, or are too afraid, to vote in the run-off elections.
Mugabe has made it plain that he will never hand over power after 30 years
as ruler - even if he loses the vote again.
According to senior security sources, government officials have been told
that he intends to win the election by use of intimidation, backed up by
ballot-rigging on a massive scale.
And if that does not work, the result will simply not be published.
Shockingly, the strategy of murder and retribution has the sup****t of
Mugabe's close friend, the despicable President Thabo Mbeki in
neighbouring
South Africa.
Through illegal methods, including the torture and blackmail of abducted
opposition activists, Zanu-PF has obtained a list of all the polling
agents
and leading activists who work on behalf of Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC.
Now, village by village, town by town, it is embarking on a savage
campaign
to eradicate them all.
The attacks happen at night or in the early morning. Typically, MDC
sup****ters such as Memory are seized and subjected to terrible tortures.
For
example, boiling plastic is poured on their backs, their extremities are
burnt, or they are nearly drowned in water tubs.
The aim is to force victims to betray the identities of those on their own
side - thus providing human fodder for more attacks.
"We can trust nobody now, not even our friends," an MDC activist called
John
told me.
"You do not know if they have been turned."
Today, everyone in this tragic country lives in a state of permanent fear
and suspicion. They believe that their phone lines are tapped, and that
they
are being watched by police informers and betrayed by their own friends.
Above all, they live in terror of the early morning knock on the door.
Mugabe's thugs are nothing if not imaginative in their methods.
One MDC organiser, Moses Ba****iyawo, was beaten by Zanu-PF activists and
then forced to climb a tree with a rope round his neck before being told
to
jump to the ground, hanging himself.
Others are driven down mineshafts - as happened in the genocide of the
1980s.
I experienced a small element in this campaign of terror in the rural
areas
when, shortly after my arrival in Zimbabwe, I hired a guide to take me to
his home village some 50 miles from Victoria Falls.
The village head man told me there had been two Zanu-PF meetings there
during the past 24 hours in which suspected MDC sup****ters had been driven
away.
He also revealed that those who survive Mugabe's murderous purges are then
subjected to food deprivation.
The village elder produced a ration card entitling each Zimbabwe family to
10kg of Mealie Meal (a kind of maize that is the national staple diet in a
country plagued by food shortages) from a local relief organisation every
month.
The months of February and March had been ticked off, showing that the
food
had been handed over.
But there were no ticks for April and May, revealing how hand-outs were
stopped as a way of puni****ng Mugabe's political opponents.
The elder told me his children were away in the forest looking for wild
fruits. "We are so hungry," he said.
"People are dying."
My guide took me to see his mother - a frightened woman who told me: "We
don't sleep any more at night for fear of being caught in our beds."
The worst atrocities are concentrated in Mugabe's Mashona heartlands in
the
east of the country, where he is wreaking horrific revenge on the voters
who
opposed him during the March presidential election.
Here, the stories of burnt villages, casual massacres and roving
statesponsored militia bands are all too reminiscent of the ethnic
cleansing
in Darfur, Western Sudan.
Indeed, Mugabe's government is even using the language of ethnic
cleansing.
Augustine Chihuri, the country's hated police chief, says: "We must clean
the country of the crawling maggots bent on destroying the economy."
Grotesque language such as this is widespread.
The violence, originally confined to rural areas, has been spreading into
towns. Details are beginning to emerge of a police operation to close down
Anglican churches in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital.
On Sunday, churchgoers were met by riot police barring the doors.
At Christchurch, in Harare's northern suburb of Borrowdale, pari****oners
found the church doors locked and groups of police waiting outside. Laymen
who attempted to protest were beaten up, while the brave churchwarden was
arrested.
Riot police also arrived at St Francis Church in the Waterfalls district,
where Communion had already started.
Police charged to the altar and seized women wor****ppers, pulling them
from
the Communion rail and beating them senseless.
The reason? Mugabe's henchmen accuse the Anglican church of being in
league
with the MDC opposition.
It is all part of a cynical attempt to break the spirit of the Zimbabwean
people.
In some cases, inevitably, the campaign of terror is working.
And I am ashamed to say the world's seeming indifference since its
attention
turned away from Zimbabwe is leaving Mugabe emboldened.
In one hospital, I spoke at length to a 35-year-old farmer called Felix.
He described how he and his wife had spent a week on the run from Zanu-PF
thugs after they invaded his village. They managed to walk 70 kilometres
to
Harare, where they found refuge.
Friends have since told him that his home has been burnt down and his 15
cattle slaughtered. Worst of all, his mother and his children have
disappeared. Despairingly, he says: "It would have been much better if
they
had killed me.
"My mother was always telling me to stop working for the MDC. She was
always
telling me I was putting our lives at risk. But I refused to comply with
her."
Now, in a state of collapse, he is consumed with bitter regrets about
joining the MDC.
A party activist, who was accompanying me, tried to comfort the farmer,
telling him: "You did the right thing. There are a lot of brave people
like
you, and we're going to succeed.
"We are in a war where we are not allowed to fight and have guns. But we
will win - because we have God on our side."
Again and again, during my visit to this country, I met ordinary
Zimbabweans
who shared this optimism, despite all the horror they are suffering.
As I stood up to leave the bedside of Memory, I asked if, despite all she
had been through, she would still vote for Morgan Tsvangirai in the
presidential run-off.
Her face lit up with a wonderful, radiant, artless smile. "Oh, yes!" she
said.
"I would. I will vote with confidence."
While this amazing spirit of courage and optimism remains, there is still
hope this wonderful country could soon rid itself of its appalling despot
Robert Mugabe - if only the world would stop averting its eyes and finally
take the moral responsibility to help end this tragedy.
|
