Horror in Zimbabwe

The IFP supports the calls from SADC and the Pan African Parliament observer missions that conditions be put in place for the holding of a free and fair run-off as soon as possible. This should be made clear to Mugabe.  

Suzanne Vos, an IFP member of parliament, has reported that she personally witnessed appalling intimidation and violence in various provinces of Zimbabwe. Vos visited homes where elderly people had been brutally assaulted because the husband was a supporter of the MDC.

Vos was alone at a polling station at a rural school where the MDC had requested the presence of PAP observers. During the day, while visiting 18 polling stations in that Ward, MDC party agents had pleaded with the PAP observers to “protect” them as they feared being murdered on their way home. Several showed Vos bruises on their bodies.

Minutes before the ballot boxes were to be opened a group of men silently entered the polling station blocking the door and forming a menacing line in front of the election officials. Vos said the chief electoral officer exhorted the men to leave and quoted electoral law as to who was allowed to be in the polling station during counting. He then pointed to the presence of the Pan African Parliament observer. The men then slowly left.

Vos had to personally intervene with the commanding officer of the police service in one area when MDC supporters trying to hold a rally were threatened with the riot police – even though they had obtained a High Court order permitting them to hold the rally.  

Vos had attended a rally held by Mugabe where he told the audience that “a ball point pen cannot compete with a bazooka… the MDC will never rule this country…”