A frightful view appears in the rear-view mirror. Two pick-up trucks loaded with threatening Zanu-PF militiamen are overtaking us. At 140kph, along 6km of winding road, they try to ambush four journalists covering a political rally in Bikita, in south-east Zimbabwe.
Leading the pack of angry, fist-waving men in paramilitary uniforms is Dr Torture himself, Chenjerai Hitler Hunzvi Zanu-PF MP, war veteran leader and instigator of violence, whose surgery in Budiriro township in Harare was used overtime as a torture centre during the elections last year.
His pick-up pulls up alongside. Dressed in olive green fatigues, Hunzvi gesticulates wildly, waves us down. Only eight days ago in the next village, Hunzvi and his men threw petrol bombs like confetti, burned two cars and assaulted four opposition MPs with knobkerries.
Lucia Mativanenga, the opposition’s national chair for women, needed four stitches on her head. We are not stopping for a roadside chat with Hunzvi. A third pick-up appears ahead. We are trapped. With a sharp U-turn and immense relief we squeeze past the car behind as it changes lanes to block us.
Later we learn that Hunzvi and his shock troops have just assaulted the driver of Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangarai and five youths guarding his car during a rally. We arrive at Nyika Growth Point, a forlorn place that has not seen any growth in the past five years, except in the production of petrol bombs.
The militia is based at the rural district council office. As we walk past it, a shrill voice very much like Hunzvi’s shrieks: “Go away! Cunt, asshole, British rubbish, this is Zimbabwe!” This is Bikita West district, 350km from Harare, where Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are fighting an ugly by-election after the death from heart failure of MDC MP Amos Mutongi. Mutongi had defeated retired Colonel Claudius Makova by a narrow margin 7 745 to 7 126.
Bikita is in Masvingo province, a former Zanu-PF stronghold now racked by internal party dissidence. The by-election has turned Bikita into a battleground.
Feared war vet leaders Joseph Chinotimba, Francis Zimuto, aka “Black Jesus”, and Hunzvi moved in. Their men set up bases at the future polling stations of Bengura and Mutikizizi schools. They include war veterans and the new youth brigades created by the sinister Border Gezi, Minister of Gender, Youth and Employment. As governor of Mashonaland Central province, he left a trail of blood during the parliamentary elections last June.
These Zanu-PF militia have been beating up people, forcing them to attend all-night rallies, stealing their property and confiscating identity documents needed to vote. Mission hospitals have treated dozens of wounded residents.
Many have fled to the mountains, among them MDC candidate Bonnie Pakai after moving his wife and two children out of the district. He remains mostly in hiding. His house shelters about 80 supporters displaced by violence. At the rally, Pakai, wearing an old black suit with a Mao collar, too hot for January, looks haggard and tired.
Dreaded Central Intelligence Organisation agents warn chiefs and headmen that Zanu-PF must win or they will lose their status, and advise people not to attend MDC rallies. Informers note who attends. At the rally in Nyika few of the crowds on the shop’s veranda dared join in. They watched nervously.
Last year, at a by-election in Marondera, the MDC stopped campaigning because of the violence. But in Bikita, the strategy has changed. MDC is fighting back. Scores of youth from other provinces moved in to campaign, and in the ensuing clashes, a Zanu-PF member was stabbed to death in unclear circumstances. Each party accuses the other.
Police promptly arrested 98 MDC activists, then released half. The other half were tortured beaten with rifle butts and sticks, burned with cigarettes and subjected to assaults on their testicles. Thirteen of them were then dropped off in pairs in a remote wildlife park in the south-east corner of the country and told to campaign among the animals.
On Monday militiamen kidnapped MDC campaign manager John Nyaki and beat him.
“The violence is far worse than in June,” says Pakai. The elections are due this weekend. Every legal challenge the MDC has mounted has been blocked. The courts have ruled in favour of the MDC several times. Its rulings have been promptly ignored.
A presidential amnesty freed Zanu-PF members found guilty of violence during the elections. A presidential decree nullified MDC court challenges to elections in 37 constituencies. The Supreme Court will hear this case on January 19.
Zanu-PF spent the Z$30-million in state funds due to the MDC for winning more than 15 seats (it won 56 out of 120) and ignored court orders to return it. State-owned radio and TV spew gross propaganda and distorted information. The MDC cannot buy advertising space, in spite of yet another court order.
To avoid a bloodbath, the MDC has ruled out mass action. It would play neatly into President Robert Mugabe’s hands. He could decree a state of emergency and crush the opposition. “If you close all avenues for democratic dissent, people will turn to violence,” says Welshman Ncube, a law lecturer, MDC secretary general and its MP for Bulawayo NorthEast. “We are dangerously close to that point. I fear for Zimbabwe.”
The odds are against civil society. The army incorporated Hunzvi’s war vets into the reserve. Business, never too brave, is afraid of having property confiscated or the militia invading their offices. Wily Mugabe skilfully suppressed all dissent inside his party at the December congress.
The economy shrunk by 6% of gross domestic product in 2000; 5% is expected in 2001. A psychotic militia leader and MP has carte blanche to assault, kidnap, torture and kill. To the international community, Zimbabwe increasingly appears as another African basket case, all the more poignant because it held so much promise.