Allerede inden datoen for Zimbabwes kommende parlamentsvalg er offentliggjort, er valget præget af frygt, trusler og vold. Militser tro mod 89-årige præsident Mugabe intimiderer vælgerne ved mobile registreringssteder.
HARARE, May 21 2013 (IPS) – For the last month Gibson Severe and his wife, Merjury Severe, known opposition supporters from Hurungwe district in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland West Province, have been hiding out in the country’s capital Harare.
The Movement for Democratic Change – Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC–T) supporters were forced to flee their rural home after Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) militias threatened them for encouraging people to participate in the recently-ended mobile voter registration.
“It’s been a month since we left Hurungwe district after the Jochomondo militia, which has known links to Zanu-PF, besieged our rural home accusing us of encouraging people to register to vote for the MDC-T,” Gibson Severe told IPS.
Since last year, the Jochomondo militia has allegedly terrorised residents in Zimbabwe’s northern Hurungwe district, a Zanu-PF-stronghold, making it almost impossible for opposition parties to campaign in the region.
Intimidation
Merjury Severe told IPS that elections in this southern African nation have become associated with threats and violence.
“This is not the first time we have been subjected to intimidation. In the 2008 presidential runoff we were beaten up for being MDC-T sympathisers,” she said.
Zimbabweans will go to the polls sometime later this year to vote for a new president. Current President Robert Mugabe, 89, has been in office for 33 years in a reign characterised by corruption, oppression, forced land seizures and a failing economy.
Process fraught with chaos
However, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai recently told media that the date for the elections would only be set after voter registration was completed. Although mobile registration has ended, voters can still register at the Registrar General’s office.
But as Zimbabwe’s first round of 30-day mobile voter registration ended on Sunday, May 19, the process was marked by long queues, slow registration and intimidation by violent gangs with suspected Zanu-PF links.
Pedzisai Ruhanya, director for the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, an independent public policy think-tank, told IPS that the process had been fraught with chaos. “The mobile voter registration exercise was not done properly. It was chaotic and characterised by political gerrymandering.”
People live in fear
Police from Mashonaland Central Province’s Bindura and Mazowe towns, which are located about 90 km north of Harare, said that people there still live in fear of a repeat of the violence that ensued during the country’s previous elections. Many are scared just to publicly support political parties.
“Nobody wears MDC-T shirts here after the 2008 violent elections that left thousands of people maimed,” a top police official told IPS.
Violence – and impunity
Global rights group Amnesty International reported that the 2008 presidential runoff had been “held against a backdrop of widespread killings, torture and assault of perceived opposition supporters.”
Human Rights Watch said in its January 2013 report titled “Race Against Time: The Need for Legal and Institutional Reforms Ahead of Zimbabwe’s Elections,” that over 200 people died in the 2008 election violence.
So far, no arrests have been made in any of the cases of apparent intimidation.
