Zanu-PF militiamen were very active during Zimbabwe’s voting days. Mercedes Sayagues reports
Mashimba Jeremani gasped as he walked into the polling station at Mataga. His torturer was seated at the table, a Zanu- PF polling agent badge pinned on his chequered flannel shirt. When their eyes met, Musiwa Mapiye lowered his head.
Jeremani (22) and two other opposition supporters were allegedly kidnapped on May 31 by Zanu-PF militia and taken to the notorious Texas Ranch, a farm occupied by war veterans and used as an operations centre. There they were tortured for two days. One of the three, Simbarashe Muchenwa, was later hospitalised in Harare in a critical condition. The torturers had held him over burning coals, forced him on to a raging fire and dropped melting plastic over his body.
Other local people identified Mapiye as a member of the Zanu-PF militia that spread terror in the Mberengwa East district, 400km south of Harare in the Midlands province.
The terror continued during the last few hours of the campaign. On Thursday and Friday, before the voting weekend, two carloads of opposition monitors and polling agents were attacked by militiamen at roadblocks. Many monitors scattered in the bush and turned up days later. Some fought back with karate kicks, injured a few attackers and escaped. Others were beaten up.
Mudondo Tinamurenda did not travel in the cars. He boarded a bus on Friday. The final stop for his polling station was by Bara Farm, next to Texas Ranch.
Tinamurenda was kidnapped by militiamen at the bus stop and beaten for more than four hours, especially on the buttocks and the soles of his feet. His clothes, shoes, identity document and money were stolen. That night the torturers left.
In the morning Tinamurenda crawled to the road and got a lift to a safe house in Zvishvavane. He was taken to a hospital in Harare on Monday, along with three other injured poll monitors. Under threat from the war veterans, the local health clinic had refused to treat victims of Zanu-PF violence.
The militia responsible for dozens of such attacks was very active during the voting days in Mataga. On Sunday I met the local war veteran commander. I was talking to the European Union observer when a local tipped me off: that’s Big Chitoro.
Big Chitoro cut an impressive figure. A burly, handsome man in a huge cowboy hat with red, black and silver eyelets, metal- studded leather wristbands, grey camouflage trousers and gleaming, coffee-coloured, soft leather boots. Knives dangled from his belt. With two lieutenants, Big Chitoro was chatting to the police at the entrance of the polling station.
I asked him if he had already voted. Yes, he said. Then it was illegal for him to be at the polling station. Non-voters were supposed to stay behind the fence, 30m away. Well, he was waiting for a family member to vote, he explained.
Waiting for Big Chitoro by the road were a dozen militiamen in a Nissan pick-up emblazoned with Zanu-PF. It was parked right at the end of the voting queue. As I walked back with Big Chitoro, the queue fell silent.
I asked him a few questions. His real name was Mike Moyo. Chitoro means “the store”, after his father’s business. He was a Zanla commander in the liberation war, then joined the Fifth Brigade of Matabeleland massacre fame. He retired in 1990.
He has apparently spent time in jail for murdering his wife and chopping up a domestic worker. I wanted to ask him if that was true, but decided that this was not the right time as I was surrounded by militiamen.
Instead, I asked how things were in Mataga. Very peaceful, no violence at all. Had he heard of torture at Texas Ranch? No, nobody lived there. Could he take me there? Maybe tomorrow.
Big Chitoro and his militia control an area of 200km2. They operate from three bases set up at Texas Ranch, Bara Farm and the Cold Storage Commission near Mberengwa.
Big Chitoro wanted to show us people injured by Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters. We followed the Nissan in a mad course over bumpy, dusty roads in the dry communal lands. Oxcarts, goats and donkeys give way. As the militia whizzed by in a cloud of dust and slogans, peasants gave a hesitant Zanu-PF salute, fist in the air. The militia call the Zanu-PF card a “passport”. People must produce it at roadblocks or they get beaten up.
We stopped at a polling station in the outskirts of town. Someone looking like a young Michael Jackson hopped out for a quick visit. He was Zanu-PF co-ordinator for electoral activities in Mberengwa East and West.
I asked him if this was the way he usually operated, running around the constituency with a truckload of menacing youth. He said it was, appearing surprised by my question.
At Musume mission hospital, 14km from Mataga, former war vete-ran Tawona Shumba said he was walking last Wednesday, minding his own business, when a group of MDC supporters attacked him. He claimed to be project co-ordinator for the NGO Care at Mapuma dam, although both Care and Christian Care denied he was a staff member.
The MDC version was that Shumba was a militiaman. A Zanu-PF gang attacked a group of poll monitors last Wednesday. The MDC people fought back with karate kicks. Shumba got a broken arm and required stitches on the head.
We walked back to the car. I asked about the metal rod, sheathed in aluminium, that Big Chitoro always carries. It is part of my culture, he said.
I had heard that Big Chitoro was very good with knives. Could he give me a demonstration?
He laughed. I am better at karate, he said. No demonstration. No photographs. No more questions.
He reminded me of Jonas Savimbi: an easy smile, a belly laugh, a certain charm that can be switched off brusquely, replaced with a killer look.
Hlupo Nkomo is the MDC polling agent at Mataga. This was the first time he had been in his home town since he fled in early June, when his home and welding shop were burnt, looted and stripped down to the roof sheets.
Nkomo wanted to see the shop. But Big Chitoro had warned him he would be a dead man if he left the polling station. We offered to take him.
At the roofless shop, Nkomo took in the charred litter, broken glass and debris. Softly, he pushed open the door to the office. Two typewriters, all the machinery, the files, everything was gone. His grief was quiet, contained, making it all the more poignant.
“Let’s go,” he said after 10 minutes. It could be dangerous to stay longer. Ten minutes to look at the wreckage of your life. Ten minutes to say goodbye to your livelihood. A lifetime to ask why this happened.
Neighbours and shop owners studiously ignored him. They had watched us go in and take photos. Now they averted their eyes. Why? “It would bring them problems to greet me,” said Nkomo simply. “Let’s go.”
These were his neighbours. He saw them every day. They exchanged greetings and gossip. Now they were afraid of saying hello.
Was it like this in Nazi Germany, when Jews were taken away and neighbours looked elsewhere? Was it like this in Rwanda, when the Tutsi were plucked from their homes and neighbours said nothing? Is this what fear and violence does to communities? Is this Robert Mugabe’s legacy to Zimbabwe?
Back at the polling station, the Zanu-PF candidate, Rugare Gumbo, had arrived – a cordial, press-the-flesh, meet-the-press kind of candidate, with a protuberant belly the size of a nine-month pregnancy.
‘It is all the fault of the MDC. They carry guns and tear gas. Otherwise, my constituency is peaceful.” Texas Ranch? “It falls outside Mberengwa East. I have nothing to do with that.”
Could he guarantee that MDC people could return and live peacefully in Mataga? Yes. How? He failed to answer. Could he tell Big Chitoro to stop the violence? “It is all the fault of MDC,” he mumbled, and made for his 4×4 in a hurry, not as smiling and affable as before.
Night was falling. The polling station had paraffin lamps but no paraffin. Candles were lit. The moni-tors slept with the ballot box.
On Sunday I asked the presiding officer how many had voted. He said he could not give me this information. Only the chief of police could. Presiding officers in Harare gave these figures with no problem. Why not in Mataga? Because he had been thus instructed by the registrar-general’s delegate. Talk to Inspector Sande. There was nothing in the regulations pamphlet about this. It was bizarre. As it was bizarre that war vets checked on polling stations; that torturers sat as polling agents; that militia combed queues; that monitors were stoned, abducted and beaten up.
Other irregularities I saw: until we arrived, a policeman stood 2m behind the open-ended polling booths. He then disappeared but monitors said the cop was behind the voters most of the time. They thought that was “improper”.
Zanu-PF heavies were hanging around the queues and polling stations. One of them tried to listen in as I talked with Nkomo, and I asked him if he was a monitor or a voter. He was neither, so he should not have been there. Sheepishly, he left.
Of the 42 polling stations in Mberengwa East, fewer than a dozen had opposition monitors. The others were prevented from reaching their post by ambushes, beatings and kidnappings.
On Sunday evening, Nkomo sensed danger. He wanted to return to Zvishvavane. “It is not safe for me here,” he said. He was right. Things were getting heavy in Mataga.
On Monday, counting day, the international observers also left early. “Too many drunks,” said one.
The opposition candidate, Sekai Holland, also left early. “Big Chitoro and his guys were harassing us constantly,” she said.
The final count yielded 23 595 votes for Gumbo, 3 117 for Holland.
“I could not campaign freely, my monitors were beaten up,” said Holland. “I will challenge this election in court.”