Rural terror as by-election approaches

At Bindura, 50 km north of Harare, scene of a hotly-contested by-election, bands of government supporters have been sweeping through the small shopping centre on a regular basis, ripping down posters promoting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and beating anyone along their way, AFP reported on Monday.
When the supporters of President Robert Mugabe came last weekend, they broke down the door, shattered several of the windows, and beat everyone in the bar with sticks, one witness said.

“If you call the police, then what?
They don’t come. They are hopeless.
They don’t come,” she was quoted saying. Like most people in Bindura, the 26-year-old woman spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. Most people spoke quietly, glancing over their shoulders, and walking away if they spotted one of their attackers, the report said. The violence, it added, was a repeat of the terror that gripped all of Zimbabwe ahead of last year’s parliamentary elections, when at least 34 people died and an estimated 19,000 were tortured.

Violence resumed in Bindura soon after the death of Border Gezi, a minister and parliamentarian who orchestrated the election campaign that ended in only a narrow victory for Mugabe. Gezi died in a car crash on 28 April, and only days later came the first reports of beatings and assaults as supporters of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party tried to force Bindura residents to attend Gezi’s memorial service, according to the report. Residents said attacks had increased ahead of the election to replace Gezi, set for 28-29 July. The MDC’s Elliot Pfebve is running against Elliot Manyika of ZANU-PF.

Rights monitors at Amani Trust, a Zimbabwean group that cares for torture victims, said reports had come in from Bindura for weeks, but said they were still documenting the cases. Few in Bindura expect that the violence will end with the by-election, as Zimbabwe gears up for presidential polls due in April. “Of course we anticipate more violence as the presidential election nears,” said a 54-year-old man, who said he was lucky to have avoided a beating so far. “We just live with it. What can we do?”