Zimbabwe’s notorious Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is running amok in the Midlands province, allegedly terrorising supporters of the yet to be launched United People’s Movement.
The party is an initiative of former Zanu-PF members who fell out of favour with the ruling party. President Robert Mugabe’s erstwhile spin doctor Jonathan Moyo and former central committee member Pearson Mbalekwa are its only public figures. Several political commentators, academics and business people have been linked to the party but have thus far not publicly declared their association.
Mbalekwa this week told the Mail & Guardian that the CIO has hounded the United People’s Movement (UPM) and made it difficult for the party to “organise”. He claims a UPM official in the Midlands province was arrested and taken to the CIO headquarters in Gweru on November 15 for setting up party structures.
“It was a harrowing ordeal. He was severely tortured and beaten,” Mbalekwa lamented.
In the small asbestos mining town of Zvishavane, about 120km south of Gweru, another party organiser had gone into hiding after the CIO inquired about his whereabouts.
Intelligence Minister Didymus Mutasa did not respond to several requests for comment.
The first sign of the government’s interest in the UPM came at an election rally two weeks before the Senate poll, when Mugabe dismissed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as “dead and buried” and warned ruling party supporters to “stay away from Mbalekwa”.
“He [Mugabe] is aware that with the demise of the MDC and the divisions he is aware of within Zanu-PF, a good chunk of our supporters would be from Zanu-PF because the majority of its membership is sick and tired of the way he is ruining the economy,” Mbalekwa said.
According to the Zanu-PF defector, the UPM has its origins in the Tsholotsho gathering last year that was aimed at ratcheting up support for Rural Housing Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa’s failed bid for the Zanu-PF vice-presidency.
Mnangagwa, long touted as the brains behind the UPM, this week again denied links to the party and threatened the Zanu-PF Midlands coordinating committee in his home province with expulsion if they associated with the UPM. His rebuke comes just days before the annual Zanu-PF congress scheduled for this weekend.
Mbalekwa ditched Zanu-PF in May over the controversial Operation Murambatsvina that the United Nations estimates left 700 000 families homeless. A former CIO operative himself, he bemoaned the ruling party turning “state institutions into Zanu-PF instruments”.
“It is not the role of the CIO to go around harassing civilians. Zim-babwe is supposed to be an independent state but the lack of freedom is manifesting itself in the fear Zimbabweans have today of the army, CIO and the police, the same instruments that are supposed to safeguard their freedom. They are independent but not free,” Mbalekwa asserted.
Asked why he thought people would support his party in view of the CIO crackdown Mbalekwa said: “We expected that … knowing how Zanu-PF has been operating in the past. We know Zimbabweans have gone beyond the culture of fear.”