Gangs of Mugabe’s loyalist thugs roamed the countryside over the past week, invading and destroying the few remaining commercial white-owned farms, while the military has been deployed to coordinate an intimidation campaign against opposition voters.Commercial Farmers’ Union president, Trevor Gifford, said some 60 farmers had fled their homes in fear of attack by mobs.
Mugabe last year promised that the land grab was a done deal and that land-hungry followers who invade farms would be removed from farms that are not earmarked for seizure. Opposition and trade unions said his about-face on a crucial a matter as the land issue was “dangerous” but not surprising.
The MDC has described Mugabe’s volte-face as “dangerous”, while the workers’ association described the entire land reform programme as “confused”.”Ideologically we have always known that he is a two-faced man who is unprincipled, but this blatant incitement to a land grab is a dangerous sign which we are seeing here and goes beyond ideological confusion and hypocrisy. There is an element of senile dementia,” said Tendai Biti, secretary general of the MDC.Wellington Chibebe, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said: “We are not surprised. “We knew very well when he said the war veterans would be removed, he was lying.”An official with the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ), blamed the confusion surrounding land reform on Mugabe, who he said was trying to win political capital by using it a re-election gimmick in a presidential run-off that he has called.
Biti said Mugabe had turned the issue into “a powderkeg”.”It epitomises the state of the country, it characterises and underpins the state of the crisis and the crisis of the state,” said Biti, adding: “Mugabe has got no love for this country, he doesn’t have love for his people, he doesn’t even care about the people being killed day in day out as long as he remains in power.”
Caption: DA Leader Helen Zille
Get tough with Mugabe, SA opposition leader tells SADC
BY CHIEF REPORTER
HARARE
South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance urged SADC leaders meeting in Lusaka yesterday to sack President Robert Mugabe from the regional body if he continued to withhold election results.Saturday’s extra-ordinary summit in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, was an opportunity for SADC to send a strong, clear message to Mugabe that he should cease to hold the entire region’s political and economic future to ransom, DA leader Helen Zille said.”SADC heads of government must let President Mugabe know in unambiguous terms that his attempts to subvert the will of the people will be frowned upon and widely condemned if he fails to put his people, the people of the region, stability and the rule of law before his perpetual blind desire to remain President at all costs,” she said.As part of its institutional review and the review of its organs, SADC should confirm its message by sacking Mugabe if he continues to undermine democracy by refusing to accept election results he has lost.”There are legitimate fears that President [Robert] Mugabe is preparing a bloody intimidation campaign to ensure that he wins a run-off election,” Zille said.
Rape victim speaks of horrific assault by Zanu militia
..police refuse to help
BY STAFF REPORTER
HARARE
An MDC supporter, who cannot be named, was gang raped by Zanu (PF) militias in Mt Darwin last week. She is one of many women who have similar assaults by Mugabe’s thugs in the brutal aftermath of his electoral defeat on March 29.In an exclusive interview with The Zimbabwean on Sunday the woman described how she was gagged and gang-raped by a gang of 10 young men high on Scuds and mbanje in a horrifying night of sexual abuse and beatings.She was untied at dawn, but threatened with death if she fled the camp.Undaunted, she escaped the next night and tried to report the case to the police, only to be turned away. “They were not interested,” she said. “These war vets and green bombers are above the law.”She said there were scores of other abducted women at the former school that has been turned into a militia camp. Some were made to wash and cook, others were forced to sleep with the gang-leaders. Most were too scared to flee because of the retribution that their family or village would face.
She said she was abducted from her home and accused of supporting the MDC and poisoning youths’ minds. She was forced into their camp, had her dress ripped off and her underwear slashed with knives.
“All I want is justice and all I can do is cry,” she said softly.Across the country, the MDC says its supporters are on the run and there are countless reports of abuse at militia torture camps.Sexual assault has also been used as part of this new strategy of terror: one 15-year-old girl was repeatedly raped by youth militia shortly after the election because they could not find her parents, both MDC activists.