Harare - The Solidarity Peace Trust has released four videos to the media showing the victims and testimonies of the horrific political violence last year towards the aborted Presidential election run-off.
The videos were shot last year as the country’s political and economic crisis worsened. On two of the videos entitled Democracy: Missing Presumed Dead and After the elections: A crisis in Zimbabwe, supporters of the MDC narrate the ordeals they went through. They talk about how they were abducted, beaten using various weapons that included chains, iron bars, whips while others were burnt under their feet with burning grass for supporting a ‘British’ funded party. The other two videos are entitled Death of a nation and A marriage of in-convenience. They narrate the effects of the cholera epidemic and the stages to the formation of the inclusive government.
Names of Zanu (PF) Members of Parliament, Newturn Kachepa, Edward Raradza and Saviour Kasukuwere are mentioned frequently in the testimonies. Mugabe’s presidential run-off election campaign last year was spearheaded and led by the military at the highest level leaving dozens dead, thousands displaced and resulted in Tsvangirai pulling out of the presidential race days before the polling day citing ‘unprecedented’ violence against his supporters by Mugabe’s Zanu PF supporters and state security agents. The MDC has said over 200 of its supporters and officials were killed in the violence towards the presidential run-off election after the March general elections.