Zimbabwe’s neighbours closed ranks against Robert Mugabe on Thursday as pre-election violence against opposition supporters intensified and spread to new areas of the country.
Pro-government militias were reported to be hunting supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) through the densely populated townships around Harare, which had hitherto escaped the worst of the violence.
Amnesty International on Thursday night reported that the bodies of 12 victims of political violence had been found around the country, all bearing signs of torture.
The report alleged they had been abducted by supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party, ”who, in some instances, were accompanied by armed men believed to be government agents”.
Four of the dead were young men taken from the house of an opposition member from the local council in Chitingwiza, the largest township around Harare, and included the councillor’s son.
The killings follow the abduction and murder of the wife of Harare’s mayor-elect, Abigail Chiroto, who was abducted along with her four-year-old son from another township, Hatcliffe. Her body was found in nearby fields the next day and the boy was left at a police station. The MDC says that 70 of its supporters have so far been killed in the campaign for next Friday’s presidential run-off vote.
”This is terror, plain and simple,” a Western diplomat in the region said on Thursday. ”The violence is spreading to areas where it has not spread before.”
Three of Zimbabwe’s neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) turned decisively against Mugabe on Thursday. ”There is every sign that these elections will never be free nor fair,” Tanzania’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Membe, said. He was speaking on behalf of his country, Swaziland and Angola, who are leading a 380-strong SADC election observer mission.
Membe said some of the 211 observers already in the country had seen two people shot dead in front of them. ”We have told the government of Zimbabwe to stop the violence,” he said. He added that he and his fellow foreign ministers would ask their respective presidents to ”do something urgently so that we can save Zimbabwe”.
At a press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on Mugabe to allow more international observers as well as a United Nations human rights envoy. At the UN in New York, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said the elections could not be free and fair under current conditions.
It is the turning of the tide in Africa, however, that is likely to have the strongest effect within Zimbabwe. Inside the South African Development Community, the Zambian President, Levy Mwanawasa, has long been critical of the Mugabe regime.
On Thursday, Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Moses Wetang’ula, condemned the ”roadblocks” hindering the MDC campaign and urged Mugabe to hold a fair election. ”Anything less is an affront to the evolving democratic culture in Africa and unacceptable to all people in Africa,” he said in a statement.
Last weekend, as Kenya hosted Zimbabwe in a World Cup qualifying football match, the 36 000-strong crowd chanted: ”Mugabe must go, Mugabe must go”.
Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame, described Zimbabwe’s election process as a ”joke” and wondered why Mugabe took the trouble to hold a vote at all. Botswana, fearful of a wave of political refugees flooding across its borders, has also protested to the Mugabe government.
African National Congress president Jacob Zuma has expressed grave doubts over the fairness of the election. President Thabo Mbeki, however, has been the most conspicuous voice missing from the regional chorus. He has repeatedly sheltered Mugabe on the world stage, even questioning earlier this year whether there was a crisis in Zimbabwe.
Mbeki travelled to Zimbabwe on Wednesday and held talks with both Mugabe and the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Mbeki has said nothing, but Business Day reported he had tried to persuade both men to drop the second round vote and form a government of national unity. Tsvangirai has vowed not to join any government while Mugabe remains in power.
While SADC poll monitors trickle into the country, observers from Zimbabwean pro-democracy groups were still waiting on Thursday for accreditation from Zimbabwe’s election commission. Diplomats said that unless accreditation begins today, it is unlikely all the observers will be accredited in time to witness the vote at the 9 000 polling stations next Friday.
Meanwhile the MDC’s number two, Tendai Biti, has reappeared at Harare’s magistrate’s court a week after he was arrested. Police accused him of treason, publishing false statements, insulting the president and another charge relating to alleged interference with the military. Police said Biti had spoken to generals about which military figures should step down if his party were to come to power. – guardian.co.uk