Biti says Mugabe desperate old man resisting peaceful transition

By Violet Gonda
15 March 2007

The opposition party has said the regime may have physically beaten them on Sunday as they attempted to gather in Highfields but in so doing actually watered their spirits for change. Tendai Biti the Secretary General for the Tsvangirai MDC said what happened on Sunday was unbelievable and an unmitigated orgy of barbaric violence.

Biti warned: “The regime is on its way out. Mugabe knows it. ZANU PF knows it. The question really is what will be the nature of transition and how peaceful or violent will it be. That is the critical question that faces us.”

In spite of worldwide condemnation the despotic regime of Robert Mugabe has vowed to crush voices of dissent. The information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu issued a statement saying: “Those who incite violence, or actually cause and participate in unleashing it, are set to pay a very heavy price, regardless of who they are.”

Human rights groups and the opposition say the Mugabe regime are the real perpetrators of violence. Biti believes Zimbabwe will see more innocent civilians getting assaulted and arrested. “I think the old man is desperate and unfortunately as with all dictators and all mad people, the more desperate they become the more vicious they will be.”

The events of the last few days have shown a more barbaric security force with no respect for the dead. This week, for two days in a row, police have been disturbing and firing at mourners gathered at the wake of Gift Tandare, the MDC & NCA activist who was shot dead by police on Sunday.

Biti said once a state begins to do this to an unarmed civilian population it is a reflection that is has lost the moral legitimacy to govern and to reproduce itself as a state “and there is only one thing that will happen. The state and those who are controlling it are on their way out.”

Describing their ordeal at the hands of the police Biti said there was an element of military training and military precision in the manner in which they were beaten. He said the assailants used baton sticks and iron bars to attack them. “Then there was this thing that I have never seen until then. It’s a baton stick but at the end of it, it has got a joint. That joint connects it to three pieces of leathers, which dangle like three snakes. So once those hit you - they take away your skin. If it hits you and there is release it also liberates part of your skin and that was a dangerous weapon.”

Biti added: “And this little boy probably 26 years old was using it very liberally on our bodies without invitation.”

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