New concerns at potential for violence

As Zimbabwe awaited the outcome of the country’s parliamentary election on Monday, tensions increased in the countryside after weeks of intimidation and pre-election violence.

“Such is the atmosphere right now,” Bidi Munyaradzi, the Harare regional director of the National Human Rights Association told IRIN, “that we can have an explosion in which there will be further loss of life and more people fleeing their homes. The atmosphere out there in the countryside is loaded.”

The association, which since January trained thousands of observers to monitor the election, said most had been turned away when they turned up at polling stations to monitor the two days of voting at the weekend.

“The initial impression we get from our people is that the voting passed off relatively peacefully in urban areas, but in the rural districts where the vast majority of people live, that was definitely not the case,” he said. “We have reports coming in of abductions and harassment, especially in the more isolated areas, and our staff around the country are busy compiling a comprehensive breakdown of these incidents.”

Since February, the association has recorded the deaths of at least 32 people, most of them opposition supporters. Scores of women have been raped, and cases of torture at the hands of independence war veterans and supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party have also been unearthed. To date, Munyaradzi said, an estimated 6,500 people had been internally displaced. “I have personally seen whole villages razed to the ground in some areas, and many more people have gone into hiding.”

He said the biggest concern of the association, churches and other rights groups was that people would not accept the outcome of the election. “We fear the likelihood of revenge attacks by both sides, and we are especially concerned at how the war veterans who have been spearheading this will react. We are very worried and everywhere our people are putting out a distress signal appealing to everyone to respect human life and to accept the outcome, whoever wins. We do not want our country to become another Sierra Leone. This is why we are less concerned with the election results than what could ensue.”

Munyaradzi said he also feared an exodus of refugees from the countryside, should violence ensue after the results are announced. A UNHCR spokesman told IRIN that the agency had already negotiated a contingency plan with neighbouring governments to ensure that people fleeing the country are provided with food and accommodation.

“We have sufficient provisions in place now to ensure that no-one fleeing this country will go without food or shelter,” the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the government said that vote counting had only started late on Monday and that there was no indication yet when the count, widely trumpeted in the state media to have been completed early in the day, would be over.

John Makumbe, a political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe, said he too was concerned at the potential for violence. “President Robert Mugabe’s party have said that they can still appoint a government drawn exclusively from ZANU-PF. Be that as it may, constitutionally, the whole point of elections is to create a government which reflects the wishes of the people. If that does not happen, we are in for a crisis. Zimbabwe is far from being a normal country and President Mugabe is likely to stick to his guns.”