Raid on MDC office claims another life

By Lance Guma
30 April 2008

An MDC female councillor for Sadza (Mashonaland East) has died from injuries she received after being beaten. She had gone to the MDC headquarters in Harare, hoping for sanctuary and medical treatment, but she was caught up in the police raid on Friday. Police bundled over 250 MDC activists and staff members into buses and trucks and took them into custody. 24 babies and 40 children under the age of six, plus 30 elderly villagers, were among the arrested. All had fled the state sponsored violence campaign in rural areas. A Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition statement says councillor Rusere was part of that group and she was detained at Braeside police station in Harare. Despite a High Court order Monday allowing for medical attention for all those detained, police ignored it until Tuesday when they released some of them. Only then was Rusere transferred to hospital where she died.

The crackdown on the opposition and civil society groups showed no sign of abating Wednesday when police raided the offices of NGO Action Aid around lunchtime. Police from the Law and Order department detained five people from the organisation, including acting country director Anne Chipembere and senior programmes officer Precious Shumba. On the same day Fambai Ngirande, the information and policy manager for the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations, was released by police following a day in custody. He had been arrested Tuesday over NANGO’s ‘Make Your Vote Count’ campaign. Ngirande was warned against speaking out against Robert Mugabe.

Meanwhile pressure group Human Rights Watch released a statement Tuesday accusing the Zimbabwean army of supplying Zanu PF militants with weapons to be used against opposition supporters. It said war veterans, soldiers and supporters of the ruling party are, ‘intensifying their brutal grip on wide swathes of rural Zimbabwe to ensure that a possible second round of presidential elections goes their way.’ Georgette Gagnon, the Africa Director for Human Rights Watch, said the army was providing the militants with weapons and trucks for use in their campaigns. The group has urged the United Nations Security Council and the African Union to ‘take immediate steps to help prevent a further escalation in violence.’

Over 15 MDC supporters have been killed since the March 29 elections that handed control of parliament to the opposition. Mugabe has since blocked announcement of the presidential election results, which many believe he lost to MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai. The Joint Operations Command, who comprise mostly security chiefs, have ordered a deliberate state sponsored campaign of violence countrywide to condition the population for a run-off. Reports say Emerson Mnangagwa has replaced state security minister Didymus Mutasa as head of JOC. Mnangagwa is thought to have persuaded Mugabe to hang onto power and that a campaign of violence would be enough to see Mugabe re-elected in a run-off. The perpetrators of the violence have been given carte blanche to do as they please without any legal consequences.

Adding to the evidence that it is a deliberate Zanu PF sponsored violence campaign, last week the Minister of Small to Medium Scale Enterprises Sithembiso Nyoni is said to have watched her aides beat up opposition supporter Zachariah Isaac Ncube in Nkayi North. Ncube was so badly beaten he had to be admitted to hospital. Lionel Saungweme our correspondent in Bulawayo says the minister watched in silent approval as her aides set about beating Ncube while calling him a ‘sell out’ and ‘stupid Blair’ (a reference to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair). It’s also reported that Mugabe’s regime has set up 5 torture bases in Matabeleland South all manned by ‘young’ soldiers, a fact that would confirm Human Rights Watch’s observation, the army is arming Zanu PF militants.