Zanu (PF) militias targeted her family because of her son’s affiliation to the then opposition MDC as an aspiring candidate for the council election in March that year. They petrol-bombed her home on a farm owned by the Harare municipality near Chitungwiza, , breaking her leg in an attack that left her nine-year-old grandson, a five-year-old granddaughter and their mother dead.
Mashoko’s attackers were never arrested and her son remains in Johannesburg, South Africa where he fled before the June 2008 presidential run-off that was marked by widespread violence. He has been unemployed ever since.
“Since that attack, life has been miserable for me and my dependants. I still need regular medical attention, my salary is too small and my husband died a year later. I suspect he was traumatised by the violence,” Mashoko told The Zimbabwean.
Little to show
This August, Mashoko, a municipal cleaner in Harare, the capital, for the last 25 years, will turn 65 and is supposed to retire from her poorly paying job. Save for the residential stand she acquired from the city council, Mashoko will have little to show for her many years of service.
Her retirement package and pension are not even sufficient for her to be able to build her own house and she will only be allowed to stay in her current house owned by her employer for six months. After that, she has no idea where she and her family will go. “I will surely not manage to raise money to pay a landlord in the suburbs,” she said.
Her financial situation was made worse by a demand from her daughter-in-law’s family that she compensate them for their daughter’s death with 10 cattle and money for burial expenses. “I still owe relatives and friends eight cattle and some money that they helped us with for the burial to take place,” she said.
Mashoko looks after two school-going grandchildren from another daughter who died in 2010 in addition to her youngest son, Clifford, now 25. He says he cannot further his education or get a job because his identity documents and school certificates were destroyed by the petrol bomb fire.
Too afraid
“Considering my mother’s age, it is me who should be looking after her, but that is difficult. I am pained by the fact that our attackers are still free and some of them are now driving nice cars while we suffer like this. My brother is too afraid to return home and, being unemployed, he has not been able to help either,” Clifford said.
Zimbabwe held presidential and parliamentary elections in March 2008, which saw MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, beat the ruling Zanu (PF) leader, President Robert Mugabe, by a narrow margin. Tsvangirai failed to gain enough votes to constitute an outright majority, leading to a second round of voting in June of the same year.
The months leading up to the run-off were characterised by widespread political violence that resulted in 154 deaths, according to the Harare-based Counselling Services Unit that provides post-trauma assistance to victims. Thousands more people being displaced and maimed and Tsvangirai eventually withdrew from the poll, citing the violence directed at his supporters, leaving Mugabe as the sole candidate. Although Mashoko and her son know their attackers and regularly see them, they are afraid to claim compensation from them.
Help for victims
Dzimbahwe Chimbga of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights says his organisation is ready to help victims of political violence claim compensation from their attackers, but that the majority of victims remained too afraid to launch legal processes while some lacked knowledge of how to do so. “There is need for them to be given assurance and educated on how to approach the courts,” he said.
Thabani Nyoni, spokesperson for the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, an umbrella body for 37 local civil society organisations, said thousands of people affected by the political violence are still facing “a multiplicity of challenges to adjust socio-economically”.
“The violence targeted mostly socially and economically active people who were breadwinners. They were disabled or killed and some had their income generating projects, property and livestock destroyed,” he said.
Nyoni added that there are no humanitarian interventions targeted specifically at helping victims of political violence to recover.
Following the 2008 run-off, the three main political parties—Zanu (PF) and the two MDC formations—signed an agreement coordinated by the Southern African Development Community that led to the formation of a coalition government the following year.
The new government set up the Organ on National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration (ONHRI) which was co-chaired by representatives of the three political parties and mandated with establishing mechanisms for national healing and unity.
Healing in limbo
However, according to Nyoni, the ONHRI “is virtually in limbo and has not done anything to help political violence victims recover”.
He accused politicians of using the police to arrest ONHRI leaders who have tried to ensure redress for violence victims.
Moses Mzila-Ndlovu, the joint National Healing and Reconciliation minister was in April 2011 arrested and taken to court for addressing people in rural Lupane on the 1980s Gukurahundi massacres carried out by the army, police and national intelligence.
The crackdown resulted in about 20,000 deaths in south-western Zimbabwe, according to the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace.
The government then claimed it was seeking to suppress a small group of dissidents. Mzila-Ndlovu was, however, subsequently acquitted by a magistrates’ court in Bulawayo. Nyoni added that it was difficult for poor victims to claim compensation from their attackers.
“Powerful politicians used poor youths as militias and those that were ultimately responsible have since become more influential through promotions in the army, police and other places, or have gained materially from the violence.”
“The cost of seeking compensation becomes high for the vulnerable victims as they are dealing with powerful people who can still determine interventions to help the victims, for instance in food aid schemes and other livelihood sustaining activities,” said Nyoni.
Short sleeve torture
During the 2008 violence, Solomon Bhowa, 50, from rural Mutoko, about 140km northeast of Harare, had his house burnt down by Zanu (PF) militias who also took his five cattle and three goats and slaughtered them at one of many bases set up to punish political opponents. “It was painful to see my attackers feed on my livestock while they tortured me,” said Bhowa who endured two weeks of torture during which his ribs were fractured and his arm was severed at the elbow.
The militias, he said, used what they termed the “short sleeve” method of torturing their political opponents that resulted in the arm being cut off at the elbow and has drastically reduced his capacity to work his plot of land.
“I no longer have any cattle to use as draught power and am now depending on neighbours during the farming season. That has reduced my family to beggars for food,” he said. His younger brother, who was also an MDC activist, lost his sight when the torturers sprayed a chemical in his eyes and now survives as a beggar at Mutoko Centre.
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