Robert Mugabe’s Militia Burn Opponent’s Wife Alive
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| Zimbabwe: 23 Years of Black Rule (Jul. 2003) |
| Zim Over the Edge (May 2002) |
| War on African Whites (May 2001) |
| Thank You, Mr. Mugabe (Jul. 2000) |
| Heart of Darkness (June 2000) |
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The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.
An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.
The killing last Friday—one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980—was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in just over two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.
Mrs Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; his six-year-old son perished in the flames.
Yesterday about 70 local MDC supporters gathered in Mr Chipiro’s small yard in Mhondoro, 90 miles south of Harare, to protect him. Inside the hut where his wife of 29 years died, women sang softly to a subdued drum beat next to the cheap wooden coffin. The thatched roof had been destroyed in the fire so they sat under the open sky. The lid could not be closed because Mrs Chipiro’s outstretched arm had burnt rigid. Her charred hand was found as women swept the hut.
Mr Chipiro, 51, a small, determined man, arrived from Harare on Friday afternoon to find his three brick huts ablaze. “I was trying to put the fire out,” he said. “I thought my wife was hiding in the bushes.”
His four-year-old nephew, Admire, heard him calling her. “He ran to me. He said, ‘Auntie has been beaten and they threw her in the fire’.”
Bright Matonga, the Deputy Information Minister and the MP for the area, lives just over a mile away. There is also a Zanu (PF) youth militia camp near by. Mr Matonga routinely blames the violence—in which nearly 70 people have died and 25,000 have been left homeless since the elections on March 29—on Britain and the United States. He claims that they pay the MDC to put on Zanu party regalia and attack Mr Mugabe’s opponents.
When Mr Chipiro went to the police, they refused to give him an official crime incident report. They fetched the body at about 10pm, he said. A post-mortem examination was carried out at St Michael’s Catholic mission hospital. At first police gave Mr Chipiro a report that left out the causes of death. An officer intervened and produced an authentic report.
The report said that seven men assaulted Mrs Chipiro “before dragging her in one of the houses and set all three houses on fire”. It said that the body showed “signs of assault since all hands and legs were broken”. The doctor who carried out the post-mortem described the cause of death as haemorrhaging and severe burns. “These youths are taught cruelty,” Mr Chipiro said. “They get used to murdering. They enjoy murdering. They are doing it for money.”
He said that thugs returned for him two nights ago but fled when they saw his supporters. “I am very frightened,” he said. “They want to kill me. But I have no alternative. My presence here as a leader is very important. If I leave, everyone else will leave. I intend to fight the battle, from here.”
(Posted on June 12, 2008)
Comments
The only thing about this that surprises me is Mugabe was able to pay these guys enough to do his dirty work for him…..considering how worthless Zimbabwe dollars are that is.
Posted by at 6:09 PM on June 12
Don’t dismiss this as one of those wild and crazy things that Africans do. Remember, we have a candidate for US president who is leading in the race and who himself is but one generation removed from the African bush and all its tribal conflicts.
Posted by Deporter at 6:38 PM on June 12
Why isn’t this a world-wide headline? Why isn’t this being discussed everywhere, by everybody? Where is CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN & every other news agency on the planet?
Are white folks doing such things to other whites?
Answers, please.
Posted by ManyQuestions at 8:58 PM on June 12
Here’s an excerpt from an Atlantic Monthly article from 1994. Have things changed in anyway?
“In forty-five years I have never seen things so bad. We did not manage ourselves well after the British departed. But what we have now is something worse—the revenge of the poor, of the social failures, of the people least able to bring up children in a modern society.” Then he referred to the recent coup in the West African country Sierra Leone. “The boys who took power in Sierra Leone come from houses like this.” The Minister jabbed his finger at a corrugated metal shack teeming with children. “In three months these boys confiscated all the official Mercedes, Volvos, and BMWs and willfully wrecked them on the road.” The Minister mentioned one of the coup’s leaders, Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa, who shot the people who had paid for his schooling, “in order to erase the humiliation and mitigate the power his middle-class sponsors held over him.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199402/anarchy
Posted by sbuffalonative at 9:21 PM on June 12
For a minute there from the sounds of the headline I thought they had killed the wife of Morgan Tsvangarai. Thank god they haven’t yet. I believe Mugabe will go down as one of histories great monsters, along the lines of Pol Pot and stalin, even though all the details arent out in the open yet.
Posted by Zarathustra at 10:10 PM on June 12
I feel compelled to point out that almost unimaginable atrocities such as this are not the sole province of black Africans in this and previous centuries.
The Cambodian communists murdered fully one third of the population of that hapless country, many as barbarically as in the instance described in this article. The Red Chinese and Soviet body counts were horrific beyond anything accomplished by the German Nazis.
Atrocities such as these are in fact a charactistic of socialist movements, wherever they’re found. All are based in a mindless hatred of the successful and a mad desire to murder them. Africans may be particularly susceptible to this sort of thinking because they’re particularly unsuccessful in competing with more able races. They did not, however, invent this sort of mindless barbarism.
Posted by john at 11:23 PM on June 12
For those of us who recall the newspapers of the 1970s, the New York Times would often have stories about Rhodesia, often on page one. The tone was always how evil the white government was. When the government capitulated to black rule, there was great confidence that a more diverse, more just Zimbabwe would be a beacon of prosperity, increasing its wealth.
Instead, the wealth has been destroyed.Don’t expect the current NY Times to compare its hopeful stories with the reality 30 years later. If it did, I am sure I know who would be blamed.
Posted by at 1:10 AM on June 13
That anyone on AR would wonder where the money came from to pay the thugs for this sort of violence?? do the Africans NEED any money or reason to do these sort of things to each other, or to any whites they catch?? I think not. I have seen pictures of Mr. Mugabe’s mansion right here on AR and have to believe that he does indeed have some sort of financial backing but I seriously doubt that it would be from any whites, Arabs maybe??
Posted by Skip at 1:53 AM on June 13
White people have done stuff like this, too. Just review the history of the feud between the Campbells and the MacDonalds for evidence.
Posted by at 5:37 AM on June 13
Please remember the nationalistic blacks in America praise Mugabe all the time; they approve of this treatment and now we have there representative running for US President.
What a blatant shame to our country and to the world; America is over as we always knew it.
Black leadership will empower this type of behaivor and empower the destructive forces in America.
Posted by jdavis at 8:12 AM on June 13
>>>Why isn’t this a world-wide headline?
Because with a first-generation Kenyan-American actually running for president, it simply would not be politically correct! After all, were such stories printed in American newspapers, some people might get the idea Obama just may not be the saintly savior of our country he tries to pass himself off to be… might even use the presidency to bring 30 million MORE Africans into our country… you know… as refugees. As a humanitarian gesture. (As if we didn’t have more than enough Afro-American criminals running wild in our streets.)
I don’t know about you, friend, but only an out-and-out lunatic would vote for Obama on November 4th. His smooth talk is too much like that of the successful con-man ‘selling’ his next victim a bottle of miracle elexir. “Guaranteed to cure anything and everything wrong with you.”
Posted by Fed Up at 8:56 AM on June 13
“If I leave everyone else will leave, I intend to fight the battle from here”. Take heed Amren bloggers, all those who are talking about tucking their tails and fleeing to Germany,or France, or wherever else. Many brave patriots have died to make this a free land. Should we flee as soon as the going gets tough? I think not, on the other hand cowards are never free.
Posted by THE OLD SAGE at 10:35 AM on June 13
Americans who get all their news from the MSM have a vague, general idea that things are not going well in South Africa and Zimbabwe, but for liberals it is an uncomfortable topic to discuss.
Here is the world view of liberals: Whites are bad, scheming and evil (all potential Hitlers) who should go the way of the dinosaur, while blacks are an honorable, noble, historically oppressed people who must be lifted up to white levels of achievement, no matter what the cost. (You see, there are no differences between the races and we are all EXACTLY the same, so this can be done, just throw money!) If you, race realist, throw a monkey wrench into that line of thinking, liberals will either become enraged or stare at you with blank expressions because you are so shockingly non-PC.
Liberals think the way to racial harmony is to acquiece to non-whites at every turn, and if whites then disappear, no problem. We will then all merge into one “tan” race and live in harmony. But my response to that is if the white race disappears and the world actually becomes a worse place, isn’t losing an advanced race of people a terrible price to pay for a failed social experiment?
Posted by Claire at 10:39 AM on June 13
In today’s (friday) paper there is an AP article about the elections in Zimbabwe written by Angus Shaw which makes no mention of this atrocity after it has been on Matt’s site for over 24 hrs. Do those guys not read the news before they try to report it?
Posted by at 1:40 PM on June 13
They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.
The killing…. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.
Mrs Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; his six-year-old son perished in the flames.
1. Thank God the British press isn’t so squeamish about printing anything “insensitive” about Africans.
2. Mugabe is a thorn in the side of anyone championing multiculturalism, diversity or black power — especially at the expense of white farmers in Africa whom Mugabe himself has driven out in a campaign of murder, violence and intimidation, even though his nation is starving without them.
Posted by at 11:49 PM on June 13
I wonder what his friends and NYC councilmembers Charles Barron et al, have to say about this barbaric act. I would also like the hear the United Nations human rights loudmouths who constantly point their finger at the USA and Dubya in defense of the desert barbarics.
Posted by Lisette at 8:36 AM on June 14
Were the most reverend Wright still shepherding Trinity he could have invited President Mugabe over, all expenses paid of course, to speak of love, harmony, and justice in an evil, white dominated, world!
Of course Senator Obama may have elected not to attend (that week)!
MoMo
Posted by MoMo at 5:51 PM on June 14