Zimbabwe violence escalates

Opposition activists have been targeted and killed. South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in Zimbabwe Friday for talks with President Robert Mugabe.

By David Montero

posted May 09, 2008 at 10:25 am EDT

Post-election violence in Zimbabwe has escalated sharply, with thousands of farmers pushed off their land and gangs loyal to President Robert Mugabe beating to death several opposition members. Fears of a political and economic meltdown have prompted some African leaders to intervene.

The number of opposition members killed has now risen to 32 following Zimbabwe's election on March 29, The Washington Post reports:

Two large truckloads of youths, led by two senior members of President Robert Mugabe's party, marauded through Chiweshe, a rural area about 90 miles north of the capital, Harare, and beat prominent opposition members with branches, gun butts, bicycle chains and whips, party officials said. Four of the victims were teachers, and at least two were elderly.

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Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said the deaths brought to at least 32 the number of opposition activists killed in the past two weeks. Thousands of others have been beaten, tortured, arrested, kidnapped or chased from their homes since the March 29 election, opposition officials say.

In response to the rising violence, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, who has been criticized for his "soft diplomacy" on the crisis, traveled to Zimbabwe on Friday in his capacity as head of the Southern African Development Community, Agence France-Presse reported. He was to meet Mr. Mugabe for the first time since the March vote results were announced. Opposition members said they had not been contacted for any talks with Mr. Mbeki.

The violence in Zimbabwe stems from the fact that Mr. Mugabe lost the first round of presidential elections and has delayed the election results by five weeks, Agence France-Presse explains.

Zimbabwe, mired in a severe economic crisis, has also been locked in a political struggle since March 29 presidential and legislation elections that called into question Mugabe's nearly three-decade rule.

Morgan Tsvangirai, who leads the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, believes he beat Mugabe in the first round.

But the country's electoral authorities, after a one-month delay, issued results giving the opposition leader 47.9 percent of the votes to Mugabe's 43.2 percent, without the majority needed to avoid a run off.

Washington considers the official results suspect, and the electoral commission has yet to set a date for the second round.

The crisis deepened on Thursday, when the Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party, said it would not participate in a presidential run off, Reuters reports.

The Movement for Democratic Change believes its leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the outright majority in the March 29 election he needed to avoid a second round. But if he does not contest, Mugabe is automatically declared the winner.

"Our official position still remains the same that we are not participating," MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti told reporters in Cape Town.

Analysts fear that Zimbabwe is quickly unraveling, and headed for an economic meltdown. Haroon Siddiqui, editorial page editor emeritus of The Toronto Star, writes:

Both the elite and the ordinary people dread what might unfold next in the diabolical mind of Robert Mugabe and thus in Mugabe-land. Yet no one quite knows how to prevent a potential bloodbath, given that Zimbabwe may already have had a quiet military coup and is "a de facto military state," in the words of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe.

But there might be little that opposition can do, he adds.

Zimbabweans – living in fear, besides reeling under hyperinflation of 170,000 per cent (as of Friday), and severe shortages of food – are in no position to duplicate Ukraine's orange revolution or Georgia's velvet or Lebanon's cedar revolutions.

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White bashing, stealing elections and battering opponents are old Mugabe tactics. Yet this round portends unprecedented danger. He used to have other tools – distributing food and hiking subsidies and civil servants' pay. Now the treasury is empty and there's no corn, cooking oil, sugar, even salt. There's not much at his command except intimidation and terror.

Opposition members and observers blame Mugabe for the violence, accusing his Army of supporting militias and violent gangs that are targeting the opposition. The Army, however, has said it is not involved, Voice of America reports.

In Harare, meanwhile, a Zimbabwean army spokesman countered reports that the military was supporting and participating in the spreading violence.

Army Major Alphios Makotore, a public relations officer, issued a statement saying the army "categorically distances itself and any of its members from such activities."

He referred to "articles being published in the print and the electronic media on allegations relating to the alleged political violence, assaults, harassment and robberies perpetrated by men in army uniforms.

Among those also targeted are said to be a growing number of Zimbabwe's farmers. Reuters reports that the move appears to be part of an escalating campaign of intimidation.

Farmers' groups said ZANU-PF has pushed 40,000 workers off farms in a campaign targeting supporters of the opposition ahead of a possible presidential run-off. The groups said armed youth militias drove workers off the farms.

"We have had security agents going out to the farms, addressing the farm workers," Gertrude Hambira, general secretary of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union of Zimbabwe, told a news conference in Johannesburg.

"Some of them saying that we need to discipline you because you voted for the opposition," she said adding [that] 400 workers were in hiding and three were in hospital after being assaulted.

The British Broadcasting Corp., meanwhile, reported that a "war veterans" militia planned a campaign of intimidation during any run-off vote. A policeman told the BBC that members of the militia would pose as police officers and be based at polling stations.

The BBC's Orla Guerin met the police officer deep in Zimbabwe's bush, as he was afraid of being identified.

"The war veterans will be wearing police uniforms," he said.

"They will be given ranks and force numbers. They'll be part and parcel of the police deployed in every ward. So when people come in to vote they will see war veterans from their area in among the police, and they will be intimidated."

He said that preparations were at an advance stage - that the order to issue uniforms had already been given by provincial police headquarters.