Zimbabwean police torture 33% of political detainees, according to a study on police brutality released in Johannesburg on Thursday.
”The Zimbabwean government has reverted to patterns of state control established under colonialism,” said Archbishop Pius Ncube of the Solidarity Peace Trust.
These include mass arrests under repressive legislation and brutality against civilians.
Growing police brutality has coincided with the rise of a democratic challenge to President Robert Mugabe’s government.
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has ruled Zimbabwe for 26 years.
The 63-page study, by the Solidarity Peace Trust and the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, evaluates 1 981 political arrests between 2000 and 2005.
Entitled Policing the State, it says the arrests took place within a brutal police force, an inhumane jail system and a collapsing court system.
Evidence of torture was found in 33% of the cases and detainees were often kept beyond 48 hours in ”appalling” holding cells.
”Our data reflects that there is a one in three chance of being assaulted or tortured before, during or after arrest in Zimbabwe.”
Nearly 90% of those arrested on political grounds in the study were not charged.
Convictions had been obtained in only 1,5% of cases that went to trial.
No real attempt was made to bring people to trial but arrests were a ”pre-emptive strike” to stop people taking action, said Brian Raftopolous of the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation.
Residents were further demobilised by a huge economic decline, which had led to reliance on everyday survival tactics. Civil society was also weakened, Raftopolous told a media briefing.
”Zimbabwe is in a state of a deepening crisis, a deepening stalemate.”
Mass marches were possible in the 1990s but the state’s subsequent response has been vicious with a peak in political arrests in 2003.
By the end of 2005, the democratic movement was in disarray with no effective response to state oppression, said Ncube, the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo.
”Even the opposition party is divided partly due to a lack of vision … in other words, a lack of leadership. We need to identify a leader.”
Zimbabweans need to be educated in order to hold leaders accountable.
”If we educate them, they can stand up to these dictators and oppressors.”
The police also need to be educated, he said.
Raftopolous said international and regional pressure must be kept up.
The South African government’s support of Mugabe’s regime, even when human rights abuses are evident, is worrying, he said.
”Where there has been evidence of abuse, we have not seen South Africa speak out. We don’t see any critical response, even on clear human rights abuses.”
A DVD, A Patriotic Force, was released on Thursday with the study. — Sapa