Zanu-PF’s hit list

Dozens of teenage girls have been made pregnant after being taken into the bush and raped in torture camps by President Robert Mugabe’s youth militia operating near Mudzi, a town 100 miles northeast of Harare, human rights workers allege.

Amid the continuing chaos, there are as yet no clear statistics, but the sharp rise in teenage pregnancies seems almost certain to have been repeated elsewhere in rural districts. Some of the victims will have contracted HIV-Aids, which has ravaged Zimbabwe for years and helped reduce average life expectancy to 34 for women, the lowest in the world.

The raped girls are the silent victims of Mugabe’s stolen election. Their suffering has been surrounded by silence owing to the stigma and shame of rape.

“It is a particularly brutal and disturbing element of the months of violence, and its after effects will be felt by these girls and their families long after the rest of the terror sweeping the country has died away,” said one human rights worker. “Some of the girls will never recover.”

There are an unprecedented 16 teenage pregnancies registered at one local hospital alone. Residents report that the local Zanu-PF militia boasts that it wants to make Mudzi an “MDC-free zone”. The torture camps, they claim, are still manned, with no sign that they are about to be dismantled.

In Harare, the new parliament is expected to be sworn in on Tuesday amid reports that the Mugabe regime plans to kill or arrest MPs from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to overturn the opposition’s narrow majority.

Among those risking their lives to attend is a former Zimbabwean headmaster who has spent the past eight years in exile in Britain, working as a supply teacher in Essex.

“I am scared,” said John Nyamandi, 56, who won the constituency of Makoni Central in Manicaland. “We know a hit list has been drawn up. But we started the game and have to finish it.”

The March 29 elections gave the MDC 100 seats compared with 99 for Mugabe’s Zanu-PF. It is the first time the ruling party has lost control of parliament since independence in 1980.

Another 10 seats were won by the breakaway MDC faction of Arthur Mutambara. This has promised to back the Tsvangirai group, but intense efforts are underway by the ruling party to try to persuade it to participate in an administration that could then be portrayed as a government of national unity.

An editorial in the state-run Herald last week stated that Tsvangirai’s party could not claim a majority in its own right without the Mutambara faction, which “can decide to side with any of the two big parties”.

At the same time, a number of MDC MPs have been arrested or are in hiding. Any parliamentarian who does not attend within 21 days of the swearing-in is automatically disbarred.

“Their strategy is to vilify the MPs and to reverse our majority in parliament after convicting them using a subverted judiciary,” said Luke Tamborinyoka, the MDC director of information.

Zimbabwean police confirmed that they have put seven elected opposition MPs on a wanted list. According to a police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, they are wanted in connection with crimes ranging from inciting public violence to attempted murder.

Nyamandi returned to Essex two weeks after winning the election, after secret police from the state intelligence service climbed over his garden wall at 4am and searched his house in Harare. Fortunately he was away in his constituency.

He is at particular risk because he defeated Patrick Chinamasa, Mugabe’s justice minister and one of the ruling party’s big names. Like most MPs, all Nyamandi’s party workers in his constituency have fled the campaign of violence.

Despite the widespread condemnation of Mugabe’s election, African, Chinese and Indian diplomats, as well as some MPs from the Mutambara faction of the MDC, attended Mugabe’s hastily arranged swearing-in ceremony for a sixth presidential term last weekend.

Their presence was troubling for the opposition, already reeling from the destruction of its infrastructure, with thousands of supporters in camps or in hiding.

Mugabe and his henchmen are facing further isolation as western countries press the United Nations to impose sanctions, including a travel ban and asset freeze on Mugabe’s top supporters.

The daughter of General Constantine Chiwenga, commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, was expelled from Germany, where she was studying, last week and had to return home. Other children of the leadership are likely to follow.

Australia has already expelled the children of Gideon Gono, who were studying there. As governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gono bankrolled Mugabe’s re-election campaign, estimated to have cost £30m. He is also on the European Union’s sanctions list.

Behind the walls of a house owned by Gono in Bath Road, Harare, the secretive Joint Operations Command (JOC) – the group of military and security brass who have been directing the violent course of events – holds meetings.

Having won the election for Mugabe, albeit at great cost in lives and treasure, the JOC’s overriding priority is to consolidate Zanu-PF power and stamp out any opposition.

Although the MDC has always avoided violence, there have been cases where young MDC supporters have felt emboldened to hit back at the Zanu-PF militia, who are responsible for most of the violence in townships and the countryside. In one case, in Masvingo province, armed troops had to be brought in to quell them.

When he came to power in 1980, Mugabe ordered all weapons to be handed over to the government. Until the past few years, Zimbabwe was so stable it was almost impossible to buy an AK-47 assault rifle.

However, last week the rifles could be found for £100, a warning that Zimbabwe could be taking the first steps towards an armed conflict.