MBARE - In the bleak, dirt poor suburb of Mbare, people know what happens to those who are in two minds about supporting Zanu (PF). They are beaten or forced to leave. The level of intolerance in this slum is surprising.
Six hundred acres of mud and filth, with a brown stream dribbling through the middle – but everyone has to back the party. Cell groups have sprung up, including one in the Mbare musika market. MDC supporters are being uprooted from the market stalls, which are being doled out to party loyalists.
Human rights groups say 140 families have been displaced from Mbare due to the escalating tension. The MDC says 1000 have been displaced. They are now holed up in “safe houses.”
The passion and sycophancy with which the Chipangano militia backs Zanu (PF) here is remarkable. At least one third of Harare lives here. Zanu (PF)’s Chipangano militia calls the shots here. Stories are told of a woman stripped recently because she was wearing a T-shirt with an inscription backing an anti-government constitutional lobby group. MDC T-shirts are banned. The female members of the Chipangano militia are the most intolerant and most brutal.
The local MDC- T MP, Pinel Denga, knows he faces a formidable challenge, standing again as the partys candidate in Mbare in parliamentary elections due to be held after the constitutional reform process. Not only is his personal safety threatened by the ruthless ruling party militia. but the minds of his future potential constituents are filled with fear.
“We have witnessed beatings, rapes and brothers being made to fight one another,” he said.
In the centre of Mbare district lies Carter House, the most notorious terror base. There are many other torture bases in the neighbourhood: the Joseph Msika base, Tendai Savanhu base, Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo base, Moven Mahachi base. They have been reactivated as part of Zanu (PF)’s campaign to crush the MDC.
Local people petrol bombed the Joshua Nkomo militia base, that demolished some of the camp building where the worst atrocities were committed against scores of MDC supporters. But the rest of them are still standing, like grim monuments to fear. The local MDC councillor Paul Gorekore’s house has already been burnt.
Now, says the MDC, Zanu (PF) is unleashing the same intimidation tactics used in the 2008 election throughout the country – beatings and “re-education camps”. No deaths have been reported in Mbare, but scores have been beaten. Some Zanu (PF) supporters have suffered revenge attacks.
“People are hungry for change, especially the young voters,” said Denga, who stands a good chance of retaining his constituency. He knows the area and its population: two-thirds of people are barely scraping a living; crumbling infrastructure; clinics without drugs or doctors; no libraries and bad schools. He knows the man eyeing this constituency, Tendai Savanhu. He defeated him in the last elections. But Savanhu has the influential Harare province behind him, the movers and shakers – Amos Midzi, Brig Gen Hubert Nyanhongo.
Denga is optimistic that the MDC supporters will not be cowed. “Our candidates and supporters are being targeted. But I think Zanu (PF) realised too late how powerful the MDC has grown. The horse had bolted before they started to try to rein it in.”
Behind a market stall in the Mbare Retail Market, a fading official portrait of President Robert Mugabe stares down at us. The woman selling groundnuts explains the ground rules of Mbare Retail. “You support the party, and you can do your business in peace,” she said.
Post published in: News