Residents in two low income suburbs of the Zimbabwe capital are due to vote in weekend by-elections, amid rising tensions between President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The run-up to the vote has been marred by increasing violence and political tension between the main rival parties contesting the polls, with Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) vowing to wrest the seats from the MDC.
By-elections were called in Kuwadzana following the death last year of MDC’s member of parliament, Learnmore Jongwe, who died in jail while awaiting trial for the murder of his wife.
In Highfield, where Mugabe has a house and casts his ballot in elections, the seat became vacant after the MDC expelled lawmaker Munyardzi Gwisai from the party over ideological and policy differences.
The MDC won all the parliamentary seats in Zimbabwe’s major cities and towns in the 2000 legislative polls.
Typical of by-elections in Zimbabwe in recent years, the upcoming Kuwadzana and Highfield elections have sparked another round of beatings, intimidation and arrests, mainly of opposition members, including lawmakers.
The MDC says hundreds of its supporters have been assaulted. Some of them, bearing the signs of brutal assaults, have been paraded at press conferences. The attacks on its members have been conducted by men dressed in military uniform, the MDC has said.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai this week blamed the attacks on Zanu-PF militias who had dressed up as soldiers.
A small opposition party, the National Alliance for Good Governance (NAGG) which is participating in the by-elections, has also alleged its members have been harassed and intimidated.
Rabson Maserema, spokesman for NAGG, said a number of the party’s members had been victims of harassment and intimidation by Zanu-PF militias who raided their homes at night.
He warned that if his members continued to be harassed they would be ”obliged to retaliate… to defend ourselves”.
The MDC has posed the strongest challenge yet to Mugabe’s 23-year rule, winning 57 of the 120 contested seats during the June 2000 parliamentary elections.
Earlier by-elections in at least seven constituencies in the past two years have ended in victories for Zanu-PF after violent campaigns.
The MDC has warned that if there are signs of electoral irregularities in the weekend polls, it could ignite a violent backlash.
The party claimed Thursday that thousands of people from outside the constituencies had been irregularly registered to vote in the upcoming polls.
The announcement of the results of the two votes is expected to coincide with the expiration of a deadline by the opposition to Mugabe’s government to meet certain demands.
The MDC gave the government a deadline of March 31 to reply to a 15-point list of demands it has drawn up to try to resolve the country’s economic, political and social crises.
Among the demands is a call for an end to state-sponsored violence.
”Repression has never restrained people from acting. If at all, it has put people in a more determined position to confront this regime,” said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
”No amount of beatings or thuggery is going to discourage people from engaging in an agenda that will see this regime out,” he told reporters this week.
Faced with a crumbling economy, famine and rising poverty, Mugabe has banked his party’s political future on his controversial land reform scheme, which seeks to redress colonial-era inequities by resettling black farmers on white-owned land. – Sapa-AFP