14 April: Media report of rape of a farm worker’s daughter by war veteran occupying Arizona farm. When the brother interceded he is reportedly assaulted and farm workers drove the war veterans off. No police action reported.

April: Two young white women were gang-raped on a farm just outside Harare. The choice of victims, nieces of a senior figure in the CFU, was seen as proof that its leaders are being targeted for attacks. Tonia Jowett, 25, and her sister, Laura Wiggins, 18, were each raped in succession by two assailants among about five men who stormed their home that night. They agreed for their names to be published to draw attention to the ordeal they suffered. Mrs Jowett’s husband, Brendan, 28, was knocked senseless when a brick was smashed into his face repeatedly. Mrs Jowett had furniture oil poured over her after her ordeal in a failed attempt to burn them to death in their cottage on Chedgelow farm, about 10km south of Harare. Police denied that the attack was "political" - that it was another brutal raid by veterans. But the evidence suggested otherwise. Mr Jowett said in an interview that the attackers had repeatedly asked Miss Wiggins who she was going to vote for and whether she supported the MDC. (Standard 23 April)

April 21-23: Violence Monitoring Project report of six cases of rape of farm worker wives and daughters. Musasa project reported to want to send mobile units to farms but unable to get police protection.

May: The wife of a teacher at Chitimbe Primary School in Mutawatawa was allegedly raped when a gang of suspected Zanu (PF) youths attacked her husband at the school as political violence against teachers intensifies in Mashonaland East province. (DN 11 May)

21 May: Media / ZUD reported case of three schoolgirls raped at St Pauls Musami in Murehwa in politically motivated violence allegedly by Zanu (PF) supporters. Report to police not made reportedly due to fear of police bias. (Standard 21 May) In a Daily News story on 9 June this report was carried:

St Paul’s Mission Catholic Mission school in Murewa, 80 km northeast of Harare. It runs a mission school. It became a target for Zanu (PF) youths, who are based at the local Shavanhwoye nightclub at the shopping centre, after they entered the school and found T-shirts signifying support for MDC. They beat up two teachers and accused the school of disseminating MDC propaganda. The teachers were stooges, they said, for white imperialists who would destroy Zimbabwe. Tabitha, a 16-year-old houseworker at St Paul’s. Until the Zanu (PF) supporters arrived. Tabitha is too young to vote in the election. She has no understanding of the brutal politics behind the attack on her as she walked to nearby shops with her friend, Florence. She simply sits on a couch, wraps a white woollen shawl tightly around her body and talks in a quiet monotone about the day that ended her hitherto happy life. "I have lost my virginity and I want only death," she said. One afternoon this month she finished cooking lunch, and her friend Florence, also 16 were walking on the road from St Paul’s to the nearby Musami shopping centre to buy meat. It was dusk when two men wearing "Elections 2000" Zanu (PF) T-shirts approached Tabitha and Florence, and prevented them from passing. The men carried newly cut switches. The girls turned and ran. They did not get far. More Zanu (PF) men came running out of the fields and chased the girls down "like animals", Tabitha said. "They tore off my dress and I had only my panties left. I was screaming for help but nobody came to my rescue." Two men dragged Tabitha behind the nightclub, threw her to the ground and covered her face with a "Forward with the Land" Zanu (PF) banner. One held her arms while the other raped her, then they switched positions. "I felt a huge pain between my legs," she said. "I thought I was looking at my death." Covered in blood, Tabitha was left to crawl away. Her screams finally brought a local shopkeeper. He took her to a hospital in the St Paul's compound, where she stayed for three days. Florence was found by the side of the road, badly beaten about the head, back and arms. Tabitha is one of at least eight women to have been raped in her small village alone. All the victims say their attackers are Zanu (PF) supporters. Physical and psychological pain are not the only traumas faced by rape victims One in four Zimbabweans is HIV-positive, so there is a chance that she might have been infected with the Aids virus. Few such incidents are reported: the police are either allied with the perpetrators or seem powerless to stop them.

Fideline, 33, a mother of two is hiding with relatives in Harare, she showed three knife slashes the war veterans had left on her skull and a horrific 15 centimetre wound on her breast where she was beaten with barbed wire. She was left unconscious on the side of the road after she and her friend Gladys, 33, were attacked by a group of about 30 Zanu PF men as they walked home from Good Friday services at St Paul's Church. Gladys suffered most. She was dragged into a field and raped by four men. She still cannot walk, Fideline says. "The shopkeeper who found me thought I was dead," she said last week. "I remember as they beat me, I thought, ‘Now I am going to die’."

Eveline, 16, and her 18-year-old sister Susan were forced from their home by intruders who found her washing the breakfast dishes before going to school. The girls were marched through the village as the Zanu PF men forced more and more young women ran away, they would catch us and we would not go home any more," Eveline said. The raiding party eventually gathered a group of about 30 girls and marched them to Ngomamowa, where they arrived in the late afternoon. Eveline can barely utter the words to explain what happened. She speaks almost in a whisper, picking at her hands as she talks. She and Susan were forced to cook sadza and meat for their captors. Then they sang party songs and danced for hours. During the night, the so-called war veterans took some of the girls into a local grain mill and raped them on the concrete floor. "I don’t know how many were raped." Eveline said. She and Susan were released in the morning. Others were held for days.

May: The Zimbabwe Union of Democrat’s (ZUD) parliamentary candidate for Glen View, Fatima Tungani, who has been looking after the girls since their arrival in Harare one and half weeks ago, said what had happened to the girls was shocking: "Three of the girls were raped while others were grabbed all over their bodies and beaten up severely at the school." Tungani said the most frightful aspect was that the women had not been able to report the crime to the police of that area who were known to be partial to Zanu (PF) which was blamed for instigating the violence. Tungani said four youths had also fled Murehwa yesterday: "The boys said they ran away because they didn’t want to undergo forced military training by the war veterans who said they were preparing for war in case the ruling party was removed from power." She said people were now living in fear of their lives in Murehwa. (Standard 21 May)

May: A middle aged woman who had fled to Harare alleges that she was raped by marauding Zanu (PF) supporters in front of her children and the other villagers. This rape was alleged to have taken place in Chief Nyakuchena’s area in Mudzi. Mudzi is about 200 km north east of Harare. (Fingaz 25 May)

May: Reports to health services of schoolchildren in Raffingora threatened with rape. Perpetrators not reported.