At about 5pm on Friday, the police, army and war veterans went around the second biggest city of Bulawayo, terrorising residents who had ignored threats of terror from war veterans and other ZANU (PF) supporters to stay at home as Mugabe’s government went ahead with its Presidential election “run-off”.
The terror groups, who began by forcing shop owners to close their doors to the public, later on began to harass prospective shoppers, asking them why they had not voted and accusing them of being agents of illegal regime change.
At Bulawayo’s Sekusile shopping centre in Nkulumane high-density suburb, scores of basic commodity parallel market traders and prospective shoppers were arrested and bundled into police vehicles, while some of them were severly beaten up by the baton wielding police officers.Some of the residents who spoke to our reporter after escaping from the police officers, accused the lawmen of having threatened to continue the assaults until Mugabe was accepted as President by the rest of the world.
“They accused us of trying to influence the world leaders into declaring the elections void and imposing further sanctions on the country. They said that we would not rest until Mugabe was declared President and accepted by the whole world,” said Dumisani Moyo, a school teacher in the city.Nelson Chamisa, the MDC national spokesman, also confirmed the operation, which he said had been carried out nationwide.
“The police officers want residents to show them their left little finger, which for those that voted should be painted red. They are assaulting those that do not have the red paint. This is widespread and deeply worrying,” he said.
Mugabe, whose authoritarian rule and polpulist policies have been blamed for destroying one of Africa’s erstwhile growing economies by reducing Zimbabwe, the former bread basket of Southern Africa, into a basket case, ignored international pressure for him to call off the run-off, vowing that he will not be forced by even the African Union (AU) to violate his country’s laws by heeding those calls.
“We cannot heed such calls because that will be a violation of our laws. We know that some of our African brothers are being used by Britain and the United States to push regime change agendas here, because that is where their budgets are made. I will be there in Cairo for an AU summit next week and I want to see those from the AU who will point a finger at me and accuse me of wrongdoing. I want to see that finger pointed at me and I will check if that finger is clean or dirty,” said Mugabe while addressing his supporters at Chitungwiza town during his last campaign rally.
On Friday morning, scores of Mugabe’s supporters, led by war veterans, carried out a door-to-door campaign of intimidation against Bulawayo residents, whom they said should not stay at home if they wanted to remain safe in the country.”We know that most of you support the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) and would want to follow calls by that party for you to stay at home. However, if you know what is good for you, then go and vote. We will check your fingers in the evening and any day afterwards. Most of you will pay with their lives,” said one war veteran in Mpopoma medium density suburb.
The war veterans also warned residents against wearing anything red, a colour they said belongs to the MDC.
“We know that the MDC wants to cause chaos in the country today, but you are warned against wearing red because you will be playing around with your lives,” said the war veteran , who claimed to be working on orders from the “chefs”.The MDC, in one of its pamphlets distributed in the city on Thursday, urged Zimbabweans to stay at home after the party’s leader and erstwhile favourite in the run-off, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of the election in protest of a number of factors, including violence and intimidation of his supporters.
The party also urged its supporters to wear anything red and tie red pieces of cloth to lamp post and other immovable structures, something the war vets are against.Most residents in the city still stayed at home, saying they would not participate in a false election that would hand over a fraudulent victory to Mugabe.
At most constituencies, polling officers said that had a very low voter turn out, with some saying as few as 10 people had voted at 12 pm.
The voting centres had some “MDC” agents, which are however, said to be fake ones provided for by ZANU (PF) to hoodwink the public.”Some of them are police officers who have been put there by their bosses,” said a presiding officer at one school in the city.Patrick Chinamasa, the Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, denied knowledge of the war vets’ threats, accusing this reporter of lying.
“Those are lies. There are no such threats and people are freely going to vote as they feel that they have duty to safeguard their sovereignty. As far as we are concerned, Tsvangirai is running and he will be trounced heavily this time,” he said.
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