GRIFFIN SHEA, Harare | Sunday
ZIMBABWEAN police on Sunday detained for more than two hours the opposition candidate in a fiercely contested by-election, marred by widespread violence during months of campaigning.
The vote to replace the late MP and minister Border Gezi, who was a close aide of President Robert Mugabe, is widely considered a preview of presidential polls due in nine months.
State media have described the weekend polling as peaceful, but the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said police detained its candidate Elliot Pfebve for more than two hours on Sunday, while its supporters suffered beatings and kidnappings the day before.
Police officials were not reachable for comment on Pfebve’s detention or on the alleged beatings of MDC supporters.
Pfebve’s aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that riot police arrested him and 16 supporters for singing party slogans while driving to visit polling stations, after the campaign period ended Friday.
After holding Pfebve for more than two hours, police told him they had no case to file, Pfebve’s aides said.
“Saying it’s unfair would be an understatement,” MDC spokesman Learnmore Jongwe said.
“We are in the middle of the election, you hold him for two hours, and you don’t give him an opportunity to visit the polling stations, you round up his polling agents, and you say you are giving a free and fair election.” On the first day of polling Saturday, Jongwe said 21 youths were kidnapped while at least four others were severely beaten with axes, spears, iron bars and sticks in rural parts of Bindura constituency, about 60km north of the capital Harare.
MDC reported the incidents to Bindura police, who refused to open a docket in the case, Jongwe added.
“The youths who have been kidnapped are believed to have been taken to a Zanu-PF torture camp,” he said.
One MDC official in Bindura, Joseph Mashinya, told AFP by telephone that he and another man were assessing voter turnout when their truck had a flat tire.
Six people then surrounded the truck and began beating both men with sticks and iron bars, Mahinya said. The assault lasted about three hours, he said, adding that the group of attackers grew to more than 30 before the two were left with their injuries.
“We were severely beaten about the head,” Mashinya said. The two managed to drive the truck to a main road, where friends found them and took Mashinya to a government hospital for treatment.
The voting Saturday and Sunday came after months of campaigning that was also marred by violence.
Police have set roadblocks on roads leading into Bindura, and on the mostly dirt country roads within the constituency.
The election is the latest test for Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party, pitted against the two-year-old MDC, which is expected to give him a tough challenge in presidential polls due in April.
Pfebve lost his race in the June 2000 parliamentary elections, after a bloody campaign of intimidation that mainly targetted opposition supporters around the country.
Pfebve’s brother was killed before the June 2000 parliamentary elections, in what he believes was a case of mistaken identity.
Pfebve is also one of five people who sued Mugabe for 400 million dollars in a US court for alleged human rights abuses against political enemies during the 2000 poll.
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) is fielding provincial governor Elliot Manyika as its candidate.
Election results are not expected until Monday. – AFP
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