Zimbabwe’s Voters Told: Choose Mugabe or You Face a Bullet
| AR Articles on Zimbabwe |
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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 soldiers and ruling party militiamen herded the people of Rusape to an open field at the back of the local sports club and made their point crystal clear.
“Your vote is your bullet,” a soldier told the terrified crowd.
Everyone knew what he meant.
“They are saying we will die if we don’t vote for Robert Mugabe, that there will be war if we don’t vote for Robert Mugabe,” said a wary young woman holding a small child. Mugabe says it too in speeches across the land ahead of next week’s run-off presidential election against the man who beat him in the first round, Morgan Tsvangirai.
But the woman was not waiting around to discuss that. Darkness had fallen in Rusape, a small town in bloodied Manicaland, and she grew alarmed as she realised she might not make it home before the unofficial curfew put in place by the ruling party militia.
Already the Mitsubishi pick-up trucks filled with young men carrying sticks, spears and knives were out on the streets preparing to move door-to-door, beating, and sometimes killing, anyone associated with the opposition.
“They hunt the opposition. They said they ate human liver and drank urine during the war and so they were prepared for war again,” said the young woman.
The militiamen found Farai Gamba, a ward organiser for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), at the weekend and shot him dead. The Rusape chairman of a group of Zimbabwean independent election monitors disappeared on Saturday night and his whereabouts are not known. Many others have been tortured at the local militia base.
The de facto curfew is in place because the ruling Zanu-PF does not want witnesses to the terror that engulfs Zimbabwe at night, and increasingly during the day, as the party seeks to avoid a repeat of three months ago, when Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe, albeit without an outright majority to secure an outright win.
A campaign that began with the tested tactic of beatings has evolved into a full-blown military strategy of abductions and murders of opposition MDC activists and supporters. More than 100 have been killed and 200 have disappeared. Thousands more have been beaten so badly they will bear the scars for life. A number of rapes have also been reported, including of three women who had wooden poles thrust into their vaginas. But it is not clear at this stage if the attacks are a deliberate part of the terror strategy.
Often the corpses are hidden, but occasionally the killers like to display their handiwork as a warning. Chokuse Muphango was murdered in Buhera South last week. His killers put his body on the back of a truck and drove it through town announcing: “We have killed the dog.”
MDC members of parliament, mayors and councillors have been burned out of their homes and terrorised into fleeing. Hundreds of opposition activists are in jail on trumped up charges of inciting violence after being tortured and dumped at police stations.
Tens of thousands of known opposition supporters have been forced from their homes or had their identity cards destroyed so they cannot vote. The government is also laying the ground for extensive rigging by purging the election process of independent officials, such as teachers, and putting state workers and soldiers in their place.
Anyone who might stand in the way is pursued. Independent Zimbabwean groups that monitor the polls, campaign for human rights or assist the injured have been driven underground after their offices were raided and leaders arrested. Foreign aid workers have been banned from rural areas so they cannot witness the violence and intimidation.
Mugabe has said time and again he regards the upcoming vote not as an election but as a continuation of the liberation struggle against western imperialism and its “puppet”, Tsvangirai. “This country shall not again come under the rule and control of the white man, direct or indirect. We are masters of our destiny. Equally, anyone who seeks to undermine our land reform programme, itself the bedrock of our politics from time immemorial, seeks and gets war. On these two interrelated matters we are very clear. We are prepared to go to war,” Mugabe told an election rally at the weekend.
The strategy to fight back with violence was agreed by Mugabe’s security cabinet, the Joint Operations Command, of senior military and party officials shortly after Zanu-PF was shocked to lose the first round of elections.
The campaign targeted provinces such as Manicaland, Mashonaland and the Midlands where support for the ruling party was traditionally strong but swung significantly to the opposition as the economy continued to implode under the weight of hyperinflation, mass unemployment and widespread food shortages.
Zanu-PF realised it had no prospect of reversing the economic decline. Since the first election, inflation has surged to 1.6m% and the Zimbabwe dollar has fallen from Z$50m to the pound to Z$8bn to the pound. A teacher typically earns Z$40bn a month. A litre of cooking oil costs Z$20bn.
So the ruling party is quashing the opposition’s ability to organise on the ground by driving out local MDC activists and then terrorising ordinary voters. The MDC fears that it may be working.
The young woman clutching her child in Rusape certainly got the message. “We are scared. We are not going to vote. We just want to live. Some people are saying they will vote Zanu-PF,” she said.
The MDC’s national election director, Ian Makone, was forced into hiding more than a month ago. He will meet only after dark—”I work at night. I never go out during the day”—and at an empty house.
Since Makone went underground his campaign manager, Ken Nyeve, and security guard, Godfrey Kauzani, have been abducted and murdered along with Better Chokururama, the driver for Makone’s wife, Theresa, who is an opposition MP. “Better’s body was found first. They found the other two four days later. They were stabbed with knives and screwdrivers. Their eyes were gouged out and their faces burned … There’s a pattern. They torture you. They make you really, really feel the pain before you die,” said Makone.
“They were looking for me. We hadn’t told anyone where I went in to hiding, not even our staff. Maybe if we had told them they could have survived after telling.”
Chokururama had already spent several weeks in hospital after a severe beating after the first election. “After the election it was clear their strategy was one of retribution. They made up their minds they were giving in to this violence and started to position themselves in key constituencies,” said Makone. “Every day there are things that happen that I say, ‘what the hell are we doing?’ I meet people who say, ‘people are dying, people are suffering, is it worth doing this?’”
In Manicaland, where the vote swung substantially away from Zanu-PF to deliver an MDC victory, the strategy is overseen by the air force chief, Perence Shiri, who strikes terror into the population as the man who led the Fifth Brigade as it killed about 20,000 people during the Matabeleland massacres in the 1980s.
Among those who have fled rural areas of the province to the main town of Mutare are five MDC members of parliament who dare not move around their constituencies or even sleep in their homes. They include Lynette Karenyi, the MP for Chimanimani West. “They have put Zanu-PF bases in each and every ward of my constituencies where they are taking people and beating them,” she said.
Karenyi said the pro-Mugabe rallies in her constituency are being led by Shiri and the Matabeleland governor, Tinaye Chigudu. “Shiri and Chigudu held a meeting where they ordered people to beat MDC supporters. Afterwards the mob went to beat people and loot houses,” she said. “They also told the voters to say they don’t know how to read and write when they vote and they need help to vote for Robert Mugabe. People are now afraid that if they don’t ask for help Zanu-PF will know they voted for the opposition.”
Another of the opposition MPs who fled to Mutare is Prosper Mutseyami. “They came to my rural home looking for me in the middle of the night three times,” he said. “They’re picking off all my party workers. There’s 28 in police custody charged with inciting violence. They include the ward chairperson, three councillors, the organising secretary.” He said they were targeting election agents so polling stations would not be monitored and to discourage political activity.
“I’m being denied permission to hold rallies on the grounds that there’s no police manpower. The funny part is Zanu-PF are holding rallies daily in my constituency.”
Mutseyami says the forced Zanu-PF meetings are often led by a Major General Bandama. “He threatens people. They say the last time you voted you voted wrongly. If you don’t vote Robert Mugabe we will bring a war,” he said.
An MDC district organiser in Makoni, who did not wish to be named, said that militiamen beat her children to force her to unlock her bedroom door during a late-night raid on her home. The activist, clearly still shocked by the ordeal, said she was forced into a vehicle, ordered to strip and repeatedly assaulted over the following hours. “They beat me and shouted: You are a bitch. They left me at a police station. They took a bullet and threw it at me. They said: kiss that bullet. They meant I was going to die,” she said. The police threw the woman into a cell after charging her with public violence.
Zanu-PF has also targeted human rights lawyers, forcing them in to hiding or exile. Chris Ndlovu has defied the threats to represent opposition supporters hauled before the courts in Mutare. “The numbers are staggering. In some small places there are more than 100 people in prison. They are even arresting schoolchildren under 14. I have one case of a man of 94 years accused of public violence. In 16 years as a lawyer I have never witnessed this. It’s unprecedented,” he said.
“We have the military in rural areas and they target MDC supporters. They abduct them at night and take them to their bases where they claim to be ‘reorienting’ them but where they are just torturing people. When they are done they dump them at the police station where the police have no choice but to find an excuse to charge them. So the victim is accused of being the perpetrator of the violence.”
The militia has made a particular point of targeting teachers, who have traditionally acted as neutral election officials. Some schools have been left so denuded of staff they now barely function.
Felistance Sithole lives in Rusape but dares not return to teach at a school in nearby Makoni South after she was threatened because she was a polling officer in the first election. “I won’t do it again. I’m afraid. Most of us are afraid,” she said.
That is what Zanu-PF intended. In place of teachers and other unreliable elements, next week’s election will be overseen by party functionaries, soldiers and civil servants who owe their jobs to Zanu-PF.
Makone says the violence will have an impact. “We’re going to lose some of the rural votes. My estimate is we can afford to lose 200,000 votes in rural areas but we need to make it up in urban votes. We are going door to door in urban areas and begging for votes. We are holding secret meetings at night in people’s houses, telling people this is their chance.”
Makone calculates that at least half a million potential MDC supporters did not vote in Zimbabwe’s two main cities, Harare and Bulawayo, in the first round of elections and that they could tip the balance firmly in Tsvangirai’s favour.
Zanu-PF seems to have recognised the same thing and is now targeting Harare’s townships. In recent days, the ruling party’s militia has hit Epworth, a township on Harare’s eastern flank where Zanu-PF has established five bases and what is euphemistically called an “information centre” where MDC supporters are persuaded to see the error of their ways.
In Hatfield township, the militia burned down an MDC councillor’s house. He wasn’t at home. His wife and seven-year-old son died in the fire.
(Posted on June 20, 2008)
Comments
“This country shall not again come under the rule and control of the white man, direct or indirect.”
It’s time to leave them alone, white people. Drop the food aid, the AIDS support, the NGO’s, the millions upon millions of dollars spent. Hands off. It’s over.
Watch the world scream as the whites ruin Zimbabwe by leaving them alone. Watch the world’s horror that white people are allowing black Africans to suffer.
Repeat after me: Giving food, medical aid, and millions is white oppression. Not giving food, medical aid, and millions is white cruelty.
Repeat until you shoot yourself, white devil. /s
Posted by at 6:53 PM on June 20
“I have never witnessed this. It is unprecedented.” Could anyone tell me who first coined the phrase,”You ain`t seen nothing yet!” Sounds about right here…
P.S. In lieu of further comment on this topic I went to You Tube and watched “The Wild Geese ” clips.
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 6:54 PM on June 20
Barack Hussein Obama and the left all quiet on this issue. Black culture at it’s finest. I guess old Bob doesn’t play that diversity game.
Posted by Jim at 7:47 PM on June 20
“Winning the old-fashioned way: hunting and killing the opposition.”
Old fashioned? Yes, but tried and true, and it fits in nicely with standard operating procedure for handling those who criticize black despots.
Now, isn’t this situation so much better than having those honkies having control of the civilization they built?
Posted by ice at 8:59 PM on June 20
If our politicians had any decency they would immediately grant refugee status to every white Zimbabwean and otherwise leave that country utterly alone. No aid, no investment, no observers, nothing. That is the only African immigration we need.
Posted by WR the elder at 10:26 PM on June 20
this is merely the essence of black African “democracy”; the British may have colonized the country but they certainly were a failure at instilling “democratic values” in the black population; speaking of “democratic values” one has to wonder why George Bush doesn’t declare war and invade the place to bring them Democracy—-oh, I forgot, they are black and that would be racist.
Posted by at 10:31 PM on June 20
Maybe the MDC could get enough votes to win, but if it has no ground army as does Zanu/PF, then winning is pointless. If you cannot enforce your will, what do you have really?
Here in the States we are just like Zim without all the murders. The Elites want to steal everything we have, there is no windfall profits tax on credit card companies, our choice of candidates this fall is a joke, etc. etc. etc.
On further thought, factoring in the White Holocaust of all the whites here in the States murdered and raped by blacks, maybe we are more like Zim than I realize.
Who will charge Mugabe with black on black hate crimes? Charge him with black on white hate crimes?
Posted by at 10:35 PM on June 20
The Communist/neo-liberal playbook never changes.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 11:54 PM on June 20
Everyone complicit in the downfall of Rhodesia is as much to blame for the hell-hole that is Zimbabwe as Mugabe is. They should be rounded up one and all and forced to live there. It wouldn’t be a very long life, but it would be terrifying, and a good lesson to the next set of do-gooders.
Posted by Spanish Celt at 12:21 AM on June 21
Folks, it’s just another day in the hood. That’s just the way they are. If we’re shocked, we shouldn’t be. If we’re shocked, then we haven’t been paying attention, although in fact the US media ignores Africa almost totally.
Posted by JustPlainMean at 1:59 AM on June 21
I was wondering about the Zimbabwe and the South African whites allowing themselves to be beaten, run off or murdered! don’t these people have access to weapons and mercenaries any more?? Blacks have no military cohesion and are historically easy to trounce, so why haven’t the whites done so. There are quite a number of unemployed white mercs who would be glad to come and sort things out for them, I’m one of them.
Posted by Skip at 2:14 AM on June 21
This will be full blown massacre, by the time Obama becomes president, and the United Sates will be offering refugee status to the survivors.
Posted by Kellie at 8:23 AM on June 21
I wonder when Jimmy Carter will show up to certify the elections as perfectly legitimate.
Posted by at 10:21 AM on June 21
After Whites go it’ll be a return to the heart of darkness.
Whites have had their tyrants, like Stalin, but even during the darkest times they remembered when things were better and could be again. Dostoevski said “the best education is sacred memories”. That’s our pattern: good ages—a fall—memories kept alive, maybe only at our mother’s knee—and from that, the intelligence to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
Africans have neither sacred memories or high general intelligence. They never developed a literature, the repository of race memory. For tens of thousands of years crimes have been covered over and forgotten. Those alive today are the survivors of survivors. The winner takes it all.
The occasional African genius could go nowhere because there was not a high enough average intelligence to appreciate and implement his practical and spiritual gifts, and so was wasted. A Socrates needs an Athens. There’s some excellent African artistic sculpture that’s been discovered, but that’s something that a talented exceptional person could go off and do alone. But projects that required the support of other intelligent people to improve their future, it didn’t happen. This is not speculation; a hundred thousand years of not getting off the ground for all to see.
Africans are living off the capital of the White man’s brief sojourn there, but like a Soprano gangster that trys to reform himself, they will soon return to the patterns they are used to, and feel a kind of ease in that, however grim.
There are no doubt humble Africans that have had some moments of joy and tenderness stolen from their horrible history; and I say God bless them; but set beside the great massacres and heart woes they’ve had and will continue to have it’s prettty small potatoes. The image of Mugbe’s face multiplied over thousands of generations is what overwhelms you.
Posted by Patrick2 at 12:13 PM on June 21
Folks, this is what I’m talking about with the fake achievement. Mugabe threatens everyone with death unless they vote for him. Then he can say that he ‘achieved’ re-election? This is ridiculous but this same senerio in various forms gets played out every day in this country. It will gets worse if the ‘O’ man gets into the White House.
- Realist in Atlanta
Posted by Realist in Atlanta at 1:43 PM on June 21
Anybody with half a brain could see that this is what Mugabe’s response would be. African dictators are so predictable, aren’t they?
Let a hundred flowers bloom on Zimbabwe’s grave. Let a hundred jackals contest over her remains.
To Patrick2:
Please don’t compare a “Soprano gangster” to an African. Soprano gangters are much more refined!
Posted by Soprano Fan at 5:23 PM on June 21
If Obama wins then gets a 2nd term, we’ll probably see the same type of campaign techniques used here. The USA will become like every other corrupt nation in Africa.
George Manuelian
Atherton, CA
Posted by george Manuelian at 11:02 PM on June 21
Julius Ceasar said that Ceasar makes law, but the Army makes it legal.
Posted by Skip at 11:58 PM on June 21
I know what is wrong with Zimbabwe! It must be a lack of diversity! All I read about and see are black people everywhere! Everybody knows that multicultural societies are more peaceful, stable, and wealthy while it’s citizens learn new skills, make new friends and enjoy all kinds of delicious exotic foods!
Although in all seriousness, it would be hard to imagine a multicult society as naturally divisive as blacks are among their own, and that says a lot.
Posted by ODDL at 12:44 PM on June 22
“…Everyone complicit in the downfall of Rhodesia is as much to blame for the hell-hole that is Zimbabwe as Mugabe is. They should be rounded up and made to live there…”
Posted by Spanish Celt at 12:21 AM on June 21
And there is plenty of blame to go around.
“…[Andrew] Young played a pivotal role — along with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other Carter administration officials — in enthroning Mugabe’s terror regime and turning much of the Dark Continent into the nightmarish slaughterhouse of chaos and terror it has become….”
They should also be held accountable for believing that Mugabe was anything BUT a Marxist terrorist.
For example, during his inaugural speech:
‘…Prime Minister Mugabe’s call for reconciliation between blacks and whites came as a welcome surprise to those who had for years dismissed him as ‘a Marxist-terrorist trying to gain power through the barrel of a gun.’…”
Mugabe was described by Ambassador Andrew Young as:
“…a very gentle man,’… ‘In fact, one of the ironies of the whole struggle is that I can’t imagine Joshua Nkomo, or Robert Mugabe, ever pulling the trigger on a gun to kill anyone. I doubt that they ever have.’…”
I find that I am fascinated by his intelligence, by his dedication. The only thing that frustrates me about Robert Mugabe is that he is so damned incorruptible.’…”
And by David Rockefeller, chairman of the CFR during that period:
“…Mugabe [is a] ‘very reasonable and charming person.’ Likewise, the New York Times, Washington Post, and virtually all the rest of the major print and broadcast media choir had persistently sung his praises…”
Of course, leftist ideologues such as the Young and the MSM are NEVER held accountable for their actions—after all it’s emotions and feelings that trump reality, and of course, they yearn to be perceived as ‘saviors of the oppressed.’ These saviors are nowhere to be found when Whites are slaughtered under the current governments of Zim and SA.
“…Mugabe…would go on to slaughter Zimbabwe’s white farmers…
all the while the American media cheered this sickening and deadly debacle. Even the farm invasions were lionized by the late Peter Jennings of ABC News… made the terrorists who were murdering, torturing, and raping the ethno-European farmers out to be ‘war veterans’ and heroes…”
http://thenewamerican.com/node/5059
Yes, they should be made to live in the mess they helped to create, subjected to ‘Marxist terrorism at the barrel of a gun.’
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 4:13 PM on June 22
“Folks, it’s just another day in the hood. That’s just the way they are. If we’re shocked, we shouldn’t be. If we’re shocked, then we haven’t been paying attention, although in fact the US media ignores Africa almost totally.
Posted by JustPlainMean at 1:59 AM on June 21”
You got THAT right. When a dog urinates on a fire hydrant, he’s not committing vandalism, he’s just being a dog. Maybe that’s why the US news media ignores them…ho hum, nothing to see.
Not to mention that the average public school “graduate” these days probably couldn’t find Africa on a map.
Posted by Wild Eyed Charlie at 4:36 PM on June 22
Obviously the US as the great defender of justice and promotor of democracy should immediately invade Zimbabwe.
Mugabe should be put on trial, fair elections without intimidation or reprisals.
Mugabe should go the way of Sadam.
Where is the great USA, the great protector of democracy, a country that will fight against terror and injustice.
Posted by at 8:50 PM on June 22
“If we’re shocked, then we haven’t been paying attention, although in fact the US media ignores Africa almost totally. “
It does when Africans are being Africans, however let a white do anything to a black there or here or anywhere that matter and it would be all over the news. Muslims are still keeping blacks as slaves in Africa yet I have barely heard a word from the US media. If whites in Africa were doing that, it would be all over the American news media 24/7. Remember South Africa, apartheid was all over the news but now that black run South Africa is having serious problems BECAUSE it is black run, silence.
Posted by kc at 7:59 AM on June 23
TIme McHugh asked Could anyone tell me who first coined the phrase,”You ain`t seen nothing yet!”
Tim, the first time I recall hearing this expression was in first talkie movie, ‘The Jazz Singer’ with Al Johnson. I couldn’t swear to it but he may have said “you ain’t heard nothin yet”. In any case, quite appropriate.
Arc.
Posted by Arcadian at 1:53 PM on June 23
Just wait; in a year or two the Hollyweirdos will be telling us we need to donate money to save these idiots from their own self-destructive behavior.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 2:46 PM on June 23
The opposition candidate has withdrawn from the race after explaining that too many of his supporters were being murdered.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 3:20 PM on June 23