The Independent on Sunday
By Raymond Whitaker in Bulawayo
Sunday, 20 April 2008

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the presumed front-runner in the presidential election held three weeks ago, has said he intends to remain out of the country for the time being for fear of being attacked or imprisoned.

“It is no use going back to Zimbabwe and become captive,” the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader, who left Zimbabwe 10 days after the poll, told Canada’s The Globe and Mail. “Then you are not effective. What can you do? Do you want a dead hero?”

Mr Tsvangirai, who has spent most time recently in South Africa, said he would return, but first wanted to mobilise international support against President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF government. The ruling party lost its majority in the 29 March election, and independent monitoring groups calculate that the MDC leader fell just short of a first-round victory in the presidential poll, securing between 49 per cent and 50 per cent of the vote.

After an initial period of turmoil, Mr Mugabe and his associates have embarked on a clear strategy of seeking to reverse the result of both polls. The result of the presidential election has been withheld, and MDC officials and supporters in Zanu-PF’s former strongholds have been attacked. Some officials of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) have been arrested, along with members of the country’s largest voluntary poll monitoring group.

Yesterday, the nominally independent ZEC began recounts in 23 seats, 16 of which it had previously declared in favour of the opposition. Zanu-PF would regain its majority if the results in nine seats were reversed in its favour, but lawyers have said the exercise, which is expected to last three days, violates electoral procedures, and the MDC has said it will ignore the outcome. “We reject the outcome of this flawed process,” said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa. “As far as the MDC is concerned, the first results stand. Anything else will be an illegitimate process.” He said it was “clear” that the ballot boxes had been tampered with in the three weeks since polling.

The recounts were being observed by a South-African led team from the Southern African Development Community, but the opposition has been disillusioned by the feeble stance of the organisation and its designated mediator, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Yesterday former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said the situation in the country was “dangerous” and pointedly urged Africa’s leaders to do more. “The recounts remove any doubts about the ZEC being a partisan organisation,” said David Coltart, an opposition senator and constitutional expert. “If they start announcing that someone else has won a seat, it will be illegal. Only a court can decide that a result should be overturned.”

It was clear, Mr Coltart added, that Zanu-PF had known the presidential result since 2 April, when the government-owned Herald newspaper reported that there would be a run-off. The delay since then had removed any claim to legitimacy that the poll could have given Mr Mugabe. “All this amounts to is a rather clumsy coup disguised as an election.”

The US government and the New York-based group Human Rights Watch is among those that have accused the Mugabe government of violent retaliation since the election. Zanu-PF, it said, was setting up “torture camps to systematically target, beat, and torture people suspected of having voted for the (opposition) MDC in last month’s elections”.

According to dissident policemen who have been briefed on the ruling party’s strategy, about 50 constituencies have been targeted for intimidation. The aim was to have mixed groups of police, army officers, Zanu-PF militants and “war veterans” in place for the snap announcement of a presidential election run-off.

The police said they had been ordered to stand by and watch when party youth militia and “war veterans” attacked opposition supporters, to emphasise to the victims that they would receive no protection. The aim was to displace MDC supporters and officials, so that they would not be able to vote when the second round was called. They had also been told that less strict scrutiny would make it easier to stuff ballot boxes.

Meanwhile, a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe which was turned away from South Africa is heading to Angola in hopes of docking there. The ship left South African waters on Friday. It is believed to be carrying three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades, and an unknown number of mortar rounds. Mozambique’s transport and communications minister told Reuters that Mozambique has been monitoring the ship’s movements since it left South Africa.

The Boston Globe
By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / April 20, 2008

IN RETROSPECT , it was an exercise in naiveté to have imagined that Zimbabwe’s brutal strongman, Robert Mugabe, would relinquish power just because he had lost an election. It has been more than three weeks since the March 29 vote in which Mugabe’s party, known as ZANU-PF, lost control of the lower house of parliament. Yet official results in the presidential contest between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai have yet to be released.

There isn’t much doubt who won. Public tallies posted at each polling station showed Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change, garnering more than 50 percent of the vote. Were the electoral commission to certify those tallies, it would mean Mugabe’s 28 years at the top had come to an end. But the electoral commission, like everything else in Zimbabwe’s government, is controlled by ZANU-PF. So there will be no official results until the books have been cooked to Mugabe’s satisfaction.

Meanwhile, the regime’s thugs have been busy, staging raids against foreign journalists and opposition-party offices, invading farms owned by white Zimbabweans, terrorizing voters in the countryside. US Ambassador James McGee warned last week that Mugabe’s goon squads were carrying out “threats, beatings, abductions, burning of homes, and even murder” in areas where the opposition party ran strong. A group of Zimbabwean doctors say they have treated more than 150 people who had been beaten since the election. Hundreds more have been detained, and the MDC says at least two of its workers have been murdered.

Not for the first time, Mugabe is viciously stealing an election, and not for the first time, the international community is doing nothing to stop him. Particularly feckless has been South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki. More than any other regional leader, he could exert the leverage to force Mugabe to abide by the voters’ decision. He has refused to do so. A week after the election, Mbeki insisted there was “a hopeful picture” in Zimbabwe; several days later he held a friendly session with Mugabe, then declared to the world that “there is no crisis in Zimbabwe” – merely a “natural process taking place.”

Is it any wonder that Africa is so often thought of as the planet’s most miserable continent?

“By failing to come together to denounce Mugabe unequivocally,” The Economist concluded, Mbeki and other African leaders “have not only prolonged Zimbabwe’s agony; they have damaged the whole of southern Africa, both materially and in terms of Africa’s reputation.”

Rarely has one man’s misrule so horribly wrecked a country. The MDC’s David Coltart, a member of Zimbabwe’s parliament, surveyed some of the data recently in a study for the Cato Institute in Washington:

Mugabe and his loyalists stop at nothing to ensure their grip on power, Coltart writes. As of 2004, an astonishing “90 percent of the MDC members of parliament elected in June 2000 had suffered some human rights violation; 24 percent survived murder attempts, and 42 percent had been tortured.”

The government, meanwhile, is now accusing Tsvangirai of treason. State-run media claims he was plotting with Great Britain to overthrow the regime. But the real menace is Mugabe, who was preparing at week’s end to receive a 77-ton shipment of Chinese arms, including AK-47 rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and more than 3 million rounds of ammunition. What is he planning to do with so much additional firepower? That, Zimbabwe’s deputy information minister said, is “none of anybody’s business.”

On Thursday, a South African government spokesman belatedly acknowledged that the situation in Zimbabwe “is dire.” Now maybe he’ll say how much more dire it must get before South Africa – or any other country – finally does something about it.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

JOHANNESBURG, April 15 — Zimbabwe’s military has taken day-to-day control of key elements of the national government, limiting the authority of President Robert Mugabe as he struggles to maintain power after 28 years, according to senior government sources, Western diplomats and analysts.

Mugabe’s clout has diminished as military forces deploy widely across Zimbabwe’s countryside and in government agencies. Among those agencies is the electoral commission, which has refused to release results from the March 29 election and would manage a runoff vote, if one is eventually scheduled.

National decision-making increasingly has been consolidated within the Joint Operations Command, a shadowy group consisting of the leaders of the army, air force, police, intelligence agency and prison service — a group Zimbabweans call the “securocrats.”
Although those officials long have been powerful, their authority in government and political matters grew sharply in the days after the election, when it became clear that Mugabe had lost a first round of balloting to longtime opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Several of the securocrats, whose ties to Mugabe date to Zimbabwe’s liberation war in the 1970s, had vowed before the vote never to take orders from Tsvangirai, a former trade union official with no military background.

The shift in power is “an interim measure that is meant to stabilize the country at this critical moment,” said a top government official and Mugabe confidant, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The arrangement is just temporary because once he wins [a runoff vote], as the army expects him to, he will be back in charge.”

Zimbabwe’s political crisis has shown no sign of abating since the election 17 days ago. All sides agree that Mugabe received fewer votes than Tsvangirai, but they disagree as to whether the opposition candidate won the clear majority needed for a decisive first-round victory.

The opposition party, which asserts that Tsvangirai did win enough votes to become president, has tried various tactics to push Mugabe’s government from office. It sued unsuccessfully to force release of the results. It embraced a runoff, announced a boycott of it, then reversed again and said it would take part under certain conditions. On Tuesday, it called a general strike only to see it fizzle.

Regional diplomatic efforts, including quiet negotiations between the ruling party and the opposition, have failed so far. There are no official presidential election results, no date for a runoff and no clear path for resolving the crisis. That has made questions about who is in charge now all the more pressing. The constitutional mandate for parliament and Mugabe’s cabinet expired at the end of March.

Opposition leaders have claimed for several days that the military has quietly taken control of the government. “It’s a coup in the guise of an election,” said opposition lawmaker David Coltart, who is part of a breakaway faction that does not answer to Tsvangirai.

Mugabe’s security minister, Didymus Mutasa, disputed Coltart’s description, saying, “President Mugabe is still in charge, and that is a fact. Those people who are telling you that are wishing for bad things for this country. Wait until the runoff. We will beat them overwhelmingly, and then they will shut up.”

Yet a Zimbabwean general, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described a meeting between top military officers and Mugabe last week in Murombedzi, about 55 miles southwest of Harare, the capital. After declaring to the president that they were in charge, the officers laid out a plan by which he would contest a runoff vote in conditions made far more favorable by military control of polling stations and central counting centers, the general said.

He added that the military has assigned two senior officers to oversee each of Zimbabwe’s dozens of local government districts. Their job, the general said, is to coordinate political violence by ruling party groups that are intimidating and attacking opposition supporters.

Two people have died since the election. Dozens of others have been beaten, whipped and threatened by ruling party youth militias, opposition activists say. Veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war have occupied many of the remaining white-owned commercial farms. As police checkpoints on Zimbabwe’s highways have proliferated, a growing number are monitored by military policemen or officers of Mugabe’s secret police.

Such harsh tactics were common in previous elections, especially in 2000 and 2002; this year’s vote was generally regarded as less violent. The following day, results were posted at individual polling stations, which allowed both the opposition and independent monitors to compile tallies showing the extent of Mugabe’s loss.

This more relaxed atmosphere, which resulted largely from pressure applied by leaders of other countries of southern Africa, changed in the days after the election. Through increasingly belligerent statements, ruling party figures vowed to defeat Tsvangirai in a runoff and challenged the results of several parliamentary seats they lost.

Seven election officials were arrested, as were several journalists covering the election amid intensive restrictions on news gathering.

This crackdown has come since the Joint Operations Command took operational control of the ruling party’s political strategy and the country’s electoral mechanisms and internal security measures, the senior government sources, diplomats and analysts said. The pretext, they said, is a national security threat posed by a possible victory by Tsvangirai, whom officials long have accused of colluding with Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler, Britain, to help it reassert control.

Former Mugabe information minister Jonathan Moyo, who broke with the president and now is an independent lawmaker, said that when he was in the cabinet from 2000 to 2005, major decisions needed the approval of the securocrats, much as a company’s chief executive officer submits major initiatives to a board of directors.

Since the vote, Moyo said, power has shifted from Mugabe, whom he called “a hostage president.” “His role is as a weakened CEO,” Moyo said. “Still CEO, but one who cannot disagree with his boss.”

Media Institute of Southern Africa (Windhoek)
PRESS RELEASE
15 April 2008

A 60-year old Bulawayo woman, Margaret Ann Kriel, was arrested in the city on 10 April 2008 on allegations of practicing journalism without accreditation in violation of the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), as amended in 2007. She was not formally charged and released until 22 April on Z$100 million (approx. US$3,300) bail.

She is to reside at her given address until the end of her case and was ordered to surrender her travel documents to the Clerk of the Criminal Court.

According to reports from Bulawayo, the court heard that between 14 February and 10 April, Kriel, in the company of Robin Lee Kriel and an unidentified person, carried out interviews at various places in the city and surrounding areas.

Robin Lee Kriel and the unidentified person are still at large, the court heard.

The state alleges that they interviewed Mr David Coltart of MDC-Mutambara and Ms Thokozani Khupe of MDC-Tsvangirai.

They allegedly also interviewed members of the public about the outcome of the elections, who they voted for and how they felt about the situation.

The state will seek to prove that they carried out these activities pretending to be accredited journalists when they were not.
In a case involving two South Africans who were acquitted on similar charges on 14 April, the court ruled that the two had no case to answer under the newly amended AIPPA as practicing without accreditation is no longer an offence because journalists can only be prosecuted on the recommendation of a statutory Media Council, which has not yet been established.

The Star – Joahnnesburg
14th April 2008
By Peta Thornycroft

One of the authors of Zimbabwe’s new electoral laws says next week’s scheduled recount of 23 constituencies will be illegal.

Welshman Ncube, one of two Movement for Democratic Change negotiators who spent much of 2007 locked into rewriting some of Zimbabwe’s contentious laws with Zanu-PF during SA-mediated “dialogues”, on Sunday said Zanu-PF complaints were “concoctions after the fact, to be compliant with the law”.

President Robert Mugabe is widely believed to have lost the presidential election by at least 7 percent and has delayed releasing the results for more than two weeks so that the vote can be “massaged”.
However, Judge George Chiweshe, head of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), claimed on Sunday that Zanu-PF candidates in 23 constituencies had lodged complaints within the prescribed 48 hours after the polls closed, and therefore had not broken the Electoral Act.

The results of the parliamentary elections were public by April 1, having been posted outside polling stations and collected by civic and opposition workers.

No statement was issued by the electoral commission about the complaints nor were competing candidates informed. This is the first anyone outside of the commission or Zanu-PF has heard about the complaints.

According to Judge Chiweshe, “we sat as a commission and considered them (the applications).

“I can’t tell you when we did this at this moment we received them, that is why we ordered recounts we didn’t have to tell the world. Why should we? We are not obliged by law to do that.

“Are you calling me a liar?” he wanted to know.

Ncube labelled Chiweshe a “blatant liar and a fraudster”.

“The ZEC is acting in collusion with Zanu-PF and if they think any of us will believe them when they are a gang of fraudsters, then they can go to hell.

“They are such brazen liars and they have had custody of the ballot boxes for more than two weeks. There is no guarantee that they didn’t go back and tamper with the ballot boxes, so the outcome of the recount is a foregone conclusion.”

He said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai won a clear majority, which was why the results were not released.

MDC founding secretary for legal affairs David Coltart said: “We have asked for proof the complaints were submitted within the 48-hour period.

“The delay between the expiry of the 48-hour period and the writing of the letters of complaint by ZEC is inexplicable, unreasonable.

“The only inference one can draw from the delay is that the commission has connived with Zanu-PF and therefore acted illegally.

“One would have expected the ZEC would immediately have notified all interested parties, but they took nine days to do so.

“This is a brazen subversion of the Electoral Act.”

Last week a senior policeman with at least 20 years’ experience told The Star that ballot boxes from a Midlands constituency, now due for a recount on Saturday, were brought into police headquarters in Harare on the morning of April 5.

He said five or six young recruits took ballots for the presidential election, marked for Tsvangirai, and replaced them with duplicate ballots marked with an X for Mugabe.

Zanu-PF must win back nine seats to regain parliament.

TORONTO STAR

BY OAKLAND ROSS
Apr 13, 2008 04:30 AM

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA–The guest of honour failed to show up; the most powerful man in the room said there was nothing to worry about; everyone talked for a while and then went home.

But an emergency summit of southern African leaders held yesterday in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, failed to do what many had hoped – find some way to prevent what they see as a virtual coup d’état from being carried out in Zimbabwe, where octogenarian ruler Robert Mugabe seems determined to cling to power despite his party’s apparent rejection at the polls in a March 29 vote.

The Zimbabwean leader failed to attend the Lusaka meeting, interpreted by many as a snub of his regional counterparts.
“Mugabe is determined to hold on to power,” said David Coltart, an opposition Movement for Democratic Change Senator.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday condemned the apparent fraud now underway in Zimbabwe, where acts of government-sponsored violence have begun, aimed against opposition supporters, and where no electoral results in the presidential contest have been released, more than two weeks after the vote.

“This is a completely intolerable situation,” said Brown. “Any intimidation, any violence, is unacceptable.” He said the patience of the international community is “wearing thin.”

But South African President Thabo Mbeki – widely seen as the man in the best position to influence Mugabe – deflated hopes yesterday he might use his country’s considerable leverage to achieve a democratic solution in Zimbabwe.

After stopping off in Harare for talks with Mugabe on his way to the Lusaka summit, Mbeki downplayed the situation in Zimbabwe.
“I wouldn’t describe that as a crisis,” he told reporters.

Mbeki has spent much of the past year mediating between Mugabe and his opponents, but the South African leader has come under fire for his “quiet diplomacy” and his failure to make much headway with Mugabe, 84, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

Last week, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa called the emergency summit of African leaders to address the situation in Zimbabwe, raising hopes in some quarters that a peaceful solution to the country’s troubles might be found.

But Mugabe stayed put and dispatched several ministers.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s electoral commission will recount ballots from the March 29 vote next Saturday, a state newspaper reported today.

The Independent (London)
By A Special Correspondent in Bulawayo
Saturday, 12 April 2008

Robert Mugabe’s government banned all political rallies in Zimbabwe yesterday as tension and intimidation mounted over the still-unannounced results of the presidential election held two weeks ago today.

Police claimed they did not have the manpower to deal with political gatherings when many of their members were still guarding ballot boxes and others were posted in urban areas to prevent violence of the kind that broke out after Kenya’s recent election. A police spokes-man, Wayne Bvudzijena, said there was no need for rallies, because the elections were over.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) yesterday called for a general strike to take place on Tuesday, issuing a statement which urged “transporters, workers, vendors and everyone” to heap pressure on the authorities by refusing to work. They also said that Mr Mugabe was suppressing the result because he lost decisively to their leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and called the police announcement confirmation that Zimbabwe was now a police state.

“It’s another step towards the declaration of a state of emergency,” Nelson Chamisa, an MDC spokesman, told Associated Press. “In fact I would say we are already in an unofficial state of emergency.”

David Coltart, an opposition senator, accused Mr Mugabe of staging a “quiet coup” by refusing to publish the election results, while South African monitoring groups said the uncertainty over who was in charge of the country meant Zimbabwe was in effect under “military control”.

The ruling Zanu-PF party, which lost control of the legislature in last month’s elections, has implicitly acknowledged that Mr Tsvangirai also came out ahead in the presidential vote, but claims he fell short of an overall majority, making a second round necessary. The MDC says its candidate won outright, and has refused to take part in a second round, believing it will be delayed while Zanu-PF launches a campaign of intimidation in areas where opposition support was shown to be strong.

Gangs of Mugabe loyalists, known as “green bombers” from the colour of their T-shirts and tracksuits, have been touring rural areas, forcing villagers to attend meetings where they are warned of the consequences if they fail to support Zanu-PF next time. At some, MDC supporters have been savagely beaten.

The huts of 15 families were burnt to the ground yesterday by the Zanu-PF militia at Mount Panis Farm in Centenary, north of Harare. Some of the villagers were also assaulted while others fled to the mountains.

Another target of intimidation has been Zimbabwe’s dwindling band of white farmers, a favourite scapegoat of Mr Mugabe, who accuses them of being agents of British imperialism. In a time-worn tactic, white farms have been invaded in the past week by groups claiming to be landless veterans of the liberation war, although most are too young to have taken part. At least two more farms were seized yesterday, endangering the livelihoods of dozens of their black workers. The invasions have also hit Zimbabwe’s food supply system.

Genuine liberation war veterans have in fact sided with the opposition. An organisation called Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (ZLP), which represents former senior guerrilla commanders, criticised Mr Mugabe for the “inexplicable failure” to announce the election results.

Mr Mugabe said the veterans should “do the honourable thing and eat humble pie and leave the people of Zimbabwe in peace”.
In the towns a mood of uncertainty has taken hold as Zimbabweans wait to see whether today’s summit of regional leaders in Lusaka, and the promised High Court decision on Monday regarding the MDC’s attempt to force publication of the election results, bring decisive change.

The streets of Bulawayo, the second city, were unusually quiet yesterday, although a queue formed at a bakery which had supplies of bread. “Many people are staying away from work because nobody knows what is happening,” said one resident.

Government offices and factories in Harare were also hit by the uncertainty. “We cannot keep our production lines going in this atmosphere. We need some sort of closure on the elections. Thirty percent of our employees are staying home,” said one Harare executive. Contacts between businesses and government officials were at a standstill, he said.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Opponents fear the president plans to engineer “technical coup”.

President Robert Mugabe has delivered another shock by recalling his cabinet, which by law was suspended ahead of the March 29 elections. Some see the move as a sign that Mugabe is making plans to hold onto power well past the official date by which a second round must be held.

More than 12 days after the presidential, parliamentary and local elections, the outcome of the presidential poll has yet to be released. Asked by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, to compel the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, ZEC, to announce the result, the High Court in Harare has said it will only make a ruling on April 14.

Although the MDC has declared its candidate Morgan Tsvangirai the winner, it is possible that neither he nor Mugabe achieved an absolute majority of 50 per cent.

That would mean the two men contesting a second, run-off poll. By law, that has to happen within 21 days of the first vote, in other words by April 19.

Lawyers interviewed by IWPR said the incumbent president remains in place until he or his successor is sworn in, but the constitution is designed to ensure this period remains as brief as possible – in the case of a run-off, a maximum of 21 days.

Mugabe’s critics fear he may be planning to use the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act to extend the deadline for a re-run – and thereby prolong his presidency – from 21 to 90 days. One pretext he might use is that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission does not have the funds to run another ballot so soon.

His opponents say extending his term in office would be unconstitutional.

“If there is a run-off, the period he remains in office is 21 days. Extending those days would be completely unconstitutional. That will be equivalent to extending his term of office,” argued David Coltart, a lawyer who has been elected as an MDC member of the Senate or upper house of parliament. “He cannot use the presidential powers, because there are no unusual circumstances to justify their use. I know Mugabe can do anything, but this would be illegal and unconstitutional.”

He said “it is most important that the electoral commission works expeditiously.” ZEC to act as quickly as possible”, adding, “The present delay is inexplicable.”

Wilbert Mandinde, legal officer for the Zimbabwean branch of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, said cabinet ministers held their posts by virtue of being members of parliament, and now that new legislators had been elected, restoring the powers of the previous government was illegal.

“Mugabe has recalled them illegally. He has recalled them as what? Some of them lost in the parliamentary elections,” said Mandinde, adding, “He looks like someone who has something under his sleeve.”

In a statement justifying the decision, information minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said, “Cabinet ministers are still in office until a new cabinet is announced, to allow for the smooth running of government, implementation of polices and accountability.”

Mugabe’s decision was also supported by Patrick Chinamasa, one of the cabinet members he recalled. Chinamasa, the minister for justice, legal and parliamentary affairs, lost his seat to the MDC in the parliamentary elections. Ndlovu also failed to win a seat.

Chinamasa told journalists on April 9 that it was constitutional for the cabinet to remain in place until a new president is sworn in.

Apart from Chinamasa and Ndlovu, six other ministers failed to win seats in the election. Under a constitutional amendment, the president can appoint five non-legislators to the cabinet.

According to Coltart, “Chinamasa is being referred to as the minister of justice when he lost his seat. You can only be a minister if you are a legislator.”

He explained that the law did not provide for a cabinet during an interregnum of this kind because it was meant to last only for a short time, during which “the state is in limbo. It is actually a bit of a grey area.”

Coltart said presidential results were normally announced within a few days after polling and this was the first time the country had gone almost two weeks before a president was sworn in.

A lawyer whose organisation does not allow him to comment publicly on political matters said it was clear that Mugabe was trying to cling on to power and that his actions were tantamount to a coup d’etat.

“It is something of a technical coup, considering that the ZEC command centre is now closed,” he said. “Mugabe has no power to recall them [ministers] when a number of them have lost in the elections and can only be reappointed by a new president.”

“The only thing that Mugabe has done is that he has refused to acknowledge that an election was ever held,” he added.

Lovemore Madhuku, who heads the National Constitutional Assembly, a non-government pressure group, said the aftermath of the elections showed how much Zimbabwe was in need of constitutional change.

“The problem with Zimbabwe’s constitution is that we have a president with absolute power – a president who can even control the release of results,” he said. “Even though we now have members of parliament, their first sitting requires the proclamation of the president. Mugabe can go as long as six months before calling for a parliament sitting.”

Hativagone Mushonga is the pseudonym of a reporter in Zimbabwe.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting

By Fiso Dingaan

11 April 2008

Fighting hard to hold back tears, 52-year-old Ernest Ngwenya points to three mounds of soil crudely marked with stones and burnt logs at a clearing two kilometres from his homestead.

The contorted face tells of the emotional turmoil Ngwenya is battling to control. When he eventually manages to speak, his voice is full of pain and grief.

“I have waited 24 years for this day to grieve openly with my relatives and to show them where I buried our father, brother and uncle who were killed during Gukurahundi,” he said.

“All along, I was afraid that if I talked about something like this, more of my relatives would be beaten or killed – just like what happened during Gukurahundi.”

The government’s bloody suppression of opposition in southern Zimbabwe after independence in 1980 is known as the Gukurahundi, or “the rains that sweep away the chaff”.

The North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade killed an estimated 20,000 people, ostensibly for being dissidents. Many were buried in unmarked graves or thrown down disused mines. But survivors say the killings were systematic and targeted at Zapu office bearers and community leaders such as teachers, nurses and headmen.

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has not publicly apologised for the massacres except to say the atrocities were “a moment of madness”.

More than two decades later, life is back to normal in Matabeleland and the Midlands. But the relative calm is deceptive.

Ngwenya was able to overcome his fear thanks to help from the local legislator and members of a social justice pressure group called Ibhetshu Likazulu. Lupane member of parliament, Jabuliso Mguni, also counselled Ngwenya and his extended family, saying that it would do them good to talk about their experiences.

Ngwenya says he needed assurances that nothing would happen to him if he spoke out.

Movement for Democratic Change legislator and lawyer David Coltart believes Zimbabwe is still in a state of denial regarding Gukurahundi. Coltart was part of a team of researchers that compiled a report, called Breaking the Silence, on the atrocities over ten years ago.

“I do not think that even many sympathetic democrats who oppose the Zanu-PF regime have a clear idea of the scale of this crime against humanity – nor the extent of the psychological damage done to the affected communities,” he said.

Indeed, most survivors are still seething with anger and grief. Elda Mlalazi is a mother of two and gets highly emotional when she recounts what she endured during Gukurahundi. She shows this reporter knife wounds that she says were inflicted by a neighbour on instructions from the soldiers.

“The scars are a constant reminder, especially when my in-laws, who don’t know how I got them, start saying I was a prostitute before I got married. They laugh and say the scars were punishment from jilted boyfriends. There is nothing I can say to them but I know the truth,” she said.

Ibhetshu Likazulu chairperson, Qhubekani Dube, says his organisation is trying – albeit on a very small scale – “to bring peace and closure among people who are still grieving and hurting inside. We realise that if people don’t bring the issue out into the open, tribal enmity will continue,” argued Dube.

The pressure group, formed in 2005, helps families identify where their relatives are buried and helps to organise burial rituals. During the ceremonies, villagers are encouraged to share their experiences and concerns over the massacres. Listening to some of the mainly Ndebele villagers recounting their experiences during a grave identification ceremony for Ngwenya’s father, Mfungelwa, his brother, Aleck, and an uncle, Kaise Moyo, one is struck by the frequent reference to how “Shona-speaking soldiers” committed the atrocities.

Dube says the organisation fears that if such thoughts are left unaddressed, tribal hatred between Ndebeles and Shona will be perpetuated. He says that Ibhetshu Likazulu is trying to explain to survivors and families of victims that they should direct their anger at Mugabe “because it was him who issued the order to kill”.

Mguni believes there is a desperate need to assuage the pain and grief of Gukurahundi. He worries that life has been at what he calls a “cultural standstill” for affected families. This, he explains, is because families have not buried their relatives according to custom and consequently they cannot communicate with their deceased as tradition demands.

“We have ways of burying our own. We have not done that. People were not given a chance to grieve. We are hurting inside. We have wounds festering within that need to be treated and healed by openly talking about how and why our relatives were killed. Keeping quiet will not do us any good,” he said.

Additionally, Mguni says people’s experiences of Gukurahundi must be recorded for posterity.

Another Matabeleland North legislator, Professor Jonathan Moyo, has drafted the Gukurahundi National Memorial Bill. Moyo is an independent member of parliament for Tsholotsho. His constituency was the first area where the Fifth Brigade was deployed in January 1983.

He says he will soon publish and distribute the proposed legislation for public input before tabling it in parliament.

Moyo, a former minister of information and publicity in Mugabe’s cabinet, reckons the bill would garner enough support to allow it to be enacted because its objective of “putting in place a mechanism to deal with unresolved issues, healing the open wounds and invisible scars by seeking truth and justice”, is noble.

Coltart, however, says legislation alone will not suffice. He accepts the proposed bill “may be a useful vehicle to ascertain the views and needs of victims” but adds, “The bill itself will not heal wounds – the wounds of this atrocity will require a deep-rooted commitment by government and the entire nation to understand what happened, to apologise for what happened, and to take far-reaching steps to reconcile..the ongoing suffering caused.”

The legislator’s views resonate with those of survivors such as Ngwenya and his cousin Mlalazi. Ngwenya says now that he has dealt with the emotional side of Gukurahundi, he can start facing up to the realities of getting national identity papers for his nephews and nieces. And, one day, he hopes that the government will compensate him and his neighbours for property destroyed during the massacres.

Even then Gukurahundi will remain a part of his life. “I won’t forget. I cannot forget. How do you forget something like that? But at least now I can be at peace with myself, I know where my father is buried,” he said.

Fiso Dingaan is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.