Human Rights and Zimbabwe's Presidential Election: March 2002
A Special Report by the Research Unit
May, 2002

Chapter 7:  Campaign Realities

Presidential candidates’ political rhetoric          

Assassination ‘plots’  

Policing violence          

Political harassment 

(a)   By the state  

(b)   By Zanu-PF and / or ‘war veterans’     

Electoral malpractices

(a)   Vote buying 

(b)   Treating    

‘ZANU-PF is committed to holding free and fair elections in a free environment’.[1]

‘Whether the MDC luckily wins an election in Zimbabwe – which will never happen because the juggernaut is now moving, the machinery is now in place. We will win the elections’.[2]

‘That is why we are giving people land so that it is easy to govern them’.[3]

‘The people’s passion and craving for change is palpable and an outcome that fails to deliver this will generally be regarded as a stolen ballot… That the election will not be free and fair is now common knowledge. But will ZANU-PF be so foolish as to carry out a wholesale rigging of the election to the extent that it overturns the people’s overwhelming desire for change? This is possible. But would ZANU-PF be able to live with the consequences of a stolen election? I doubt it’.[4]

ZANU-PF is running a nakedly racist election campaign, for which it could pay a very high price later on… ZANU-PF is killing black people to retain its ugly hold on power over them’.[5]

‘Were Mugabe to win the election … hesitant foreign investors, multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the entire western world would simply leave Zimbabwe to its own fate, just as the world did to anarchic Somalia… Were opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to win the poll, the road ahead would not be that easy either. Zimbabweans would need to brace themselves for more social pain as his government seeks to pull the economy back from the precipice… The choice is truly between a rock and a hard place’.[6]

Both major parties mounted very expensive advertising campaigns. ZANU-PF accused the MDC of illegally receiving foreign funding, but Mugabe himself boasted of a campaign budget of Z$5 billion – 250% of his party’s budget for the June 2000 parliamentary elections, and very greatly exceeding its Z$60 million allocated under the Political Parties (Finance) Act.[7] ZANU-PF’s funding was thought to come from Libya, even though its strong-arm tactics saw many non-party members buying membership cards at Z$80-85 each, which swelled its campaign funds.

Presidential candidates’ political rhetoric

The violence escalated into a crescendo of political deaths early in the new year after Robert Mugabe was quoted as calling on ZANU-PF to wage ‘a real war’ on the MDC.[8] On 15 January 2002, after ZANU-PF youth had demonstrated violently against Bindura magistrates outside their courts,[9] SADC leaders reportedly told Robert Mugabe to stop the violence and punish the perpetrators.

The day following SADC’s first appeal, on 16 January 2002, Robert Mugabe was reported to have told provincial governors and party provincial chairs to stop the violence, which was attracting unwelcome international attention and pressure on him personally.[10] This report followed anothermade by the Manicaland Governor, Oppah Muchinguri, who reportedly had personally told the President to stop the violence in her province and warned the perpetrators that they personally risked their victims becoming ngozi (avenging spirits) in their families.[11] The President reportedly ordered party youth and those on national training (the ‘green shirts’) to stop blocking roads and demanding national IDs and ZANU-PF party cards (which rapidly became known, Soviet-style, as ‘the internal passport’). His message was reportedly relayed to ZANU-PF party structures by its national political commissar and MP for Bindura, Elliot Manyika, but proved difficult to implement. Three weeks later, the Methodist church called on SADC again to urge Robert Mugabe to end the continuing violence.[12]

It took further threats of sanctions from the EU and possible suspension from the Commonwealth before the State President publicly condemned political violence while commemorating the anniversary of his first wife’s death on 27 January 2002. He repeated this call a few days later, at the burial of Julius Shava.[13] The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), welcoming this condemnation, also called for government action ‘to restore a sense of impartiality to the police in dealing with political criminals’.[14]

Yet the violence continued unabated. Robert Mugabe officially started his campaign at Mutawatawa, the location during the 2000 Parliamentary election campaign of Mashonaland East’s most notorious torture centre, before proceeding to Kotwa and other centres of violence in that campaign. All of Mugabe’s ‘crassly unpresidential’[15] speeches and electoral advertising showed him waving a clenched ‘78-tonne fist’.[16] This was a symbolic reminder of his earlier utterances: ‘goborai magobo’ (‘uproot the stumps’); ‘we have degrees in violence’; ‘instil fear into the hearts of the white men’ and – most recently at ZANU-PF’s December 2001 Victoria Falls conference – ‘the war is going to be physical’.[17] As one letter-writer put it:

‘Violence starts with President Mugabe’s words and ends up with deaths, intimidation, rape, victimisation and eviction by his supporters’.[18]

The President was quoted as having told various audiences–

In Domboshava:

‘We are people of the fist. You will see it there [on the ballot papers]. It will knock you down because ZANU-PF will never lose in such a situation…We will wage another war if Britain wants to enslave us through its puppets… We have been very lenient to the British and their kith and kin here by taking back part of our land to resettle our people. But Blair has been leading a campaign to halt our land reform programme. Now, because of people like Blair, we will take all of our land. We can never give up Zimbabwe’.[19]

In Manicaland:

‘If you give the country back to the whites by voting for the MDC, you will see[20] what will happen. The country achieved independence through bloodshed… I know that most of you in Manicaland voted for the MDC in the parliamentary election thinking that Tsvangirai had a better economic package for this country. Now, let me warn you that even goblins[21] will be unleashed on you if he wins’.

In Hurungwe:

‘So, do they think if they behead me this revolution [over land] will stop? Ndinovamukira’ (meaning he would return as a vengeance-seeking ngozi)’.[22]

In Sanyati:

‘The time has now come to address the land imbalance and crush the head of the snake once and for all’.[23]

When a significant number of observers, including those from the SADC Parliamentary Forum, had arrived, Mugabe was no longer quoted or even reported by the state-controlled media as having used such language. In Hwange, witnessed by international observers, he claimed ‘Our party brought peace. We are men and women of peace.’ But he also reportedly referred to opposition supporters (including whites and the British) as imigodoyi (toothless dogs) and threatened the labour movement that if it dared to operate as a political party ‘you will find us grinning with our teeth ready to bite you’.[24]

‘It would appear that Mugabe has completely lost control of the Frankenstein monster he has created. The Herald reports that the president has in the past four weeks been addressing an average of two rallies a day at which he called for non-violence and unity. But looking at the situation on the ground, there are no signs of his message being heeded. Instead, it seems the violent mobs ZANU-PF created to spearhead its re-election campaign are under the direction of warlords who don’t take instructions from Mugabe… Why are they not listening to their boss when he tells them violence will not win the election?’[25]

After the June 2000 election, Robert Mugabe had averred that:[26]

 ‘The MDC should never be judged by its black trade union face; by its youthful student face; by its black suburban junior professionals; never by its rough and violent high-density elements. It is much deeper, whiter and wider than these human superficials; for it is immovably and implacably moored in the colonial yesteryear and embraces wittingly the repulsive ideology of return to white settler rule…’

As the 2002 election loomed and he received a backdated salary hike, the President’s rhetoric was quoted as describing the MDC as ‘murderers by instinct, absolutely callous and bloody’,[27]  ‘a party of murderers, thieves, drunkards and mbanje smokers who were … abducting, beating up and killing innocent Zimbabweans who refused to support them’.[28] Morgan Tsvangirai he reportedly described as ‘just a piece of wood that refuses to burn’.[29]

In Murombedzi, close to his own rural home in Zvimba, Mugabe was reported as threatening the interests of many segments of Zimbabwean society. He intended after the March election to deregister the ZCTU. His supporters were reportedly urged – in flagrant breach of the Abuja Agreement – to invade the few remaining white-owned farms that had not suffered this fate and to take over industries threatening to close.[30] These utterances caused concern for their residential property rights among permanent residents who had renounced their Zimbabwean citizenship, as Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge reportedly noted:

‘In fact, when we get to the logical conclusion, Europe can take all its sons and daughters who are resident in Zimbabwe if they wish to go back to their roots’.[31]

Mugabe’s threats to expel whites were constantly repeated, in Matobo, Epworth, Dzivarasekwa and Rushinga.

‘Zimbabwe is our country. It’s not a place for the Rosenfels and other whites who still occupy our country… All filthy imperialist names must go, Zimbabwe is for blacks’. [32]

‘The country must be ours in total. We will choose who shall have land here and who shall not’.

‘No Briton shall own land in Zimbabwe’.[33]

‘Shut your dirty mouth [to the West in general]…Torai vana vedu munovayamwisa kunyika dzenyu. Ino nyika yedu. (Take their children who have been put here to their own land. This is our land.) Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans and England for the English’.[34]

This overt racism embarrassed many Zimbabweans, who politely did not point out that it was both unconstitutional and illegal under at least three[35] statutes:

‘that much-talked about blackness … does not consist in belittling the white people. That is only a sign of weakness. ZANU-PF is weak. But, most important, people do not live on blackness alone. The affirmation of our humaneness is not merely a matter of anti-white propoganda… The State hate campaign deliberately misses the point… Nation-building is not based in hate propoganda’.[36]

Apart from accusing the MDC of being ‘murderers right from Tsvangirai to the lowest member in the party’,[37] Mugabe’s campaign seemed to ignore local realities such as the food and forex crises and instead concentrated on Tony Blair and Britain, as if they were the real contenders for the presidency of Zimbabwe. The state-controlled media helped:

‘The Herald has it on good authority that the British High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, Mr Brian Donnelly, is masterminding the plan [to torpedo President Mugabe’s widely-expected victory] and had briefed “selected members of the white community” about it in Harare…

Under the plan, waves of violence will be instigated from three flash points on Zimbabwe’s border points with Zambia, Mocambique and Botswana where the MDC has sought to establish military camps under the guise of refugee camps… MDC has requested for British military intervention if it loses the election… They are not having vigorous campaigns because the plan was elimination [of Robert Mugabe] and not election…’

ZANU-PF MPs also contributed:

‘I have no hesitation whatsoever in condemning those in the United Kingdom, especially Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are conspiring to in effect gang-rape our young country, Zimbabwe… Unless the machinations of Prime Minister Tony Blair are stopped, we will soon witness not only the destruction of the British Monarch and the Commonwealth, but also the crowning of the said prime minister as the first President of Europe, as an interim measure before Europe itself is ceded to the United States of America. The attempts to demonise and rubbish Zimbabwe through the European Union are part of a wider satanic conspiracy along the lines that I have just indicated. Let the British people and their noble queen beware’.[38]

‘The departure of former Chief Justice Anthony Roy Gubbay represented a major defeat for British policy in Africa’.[39]

The President’s rhetoric contrasted markedly with that of his rival Morgan Tsvangirai, who clearly envisaged future legal action rather than short-term physical reaction.

‘Mugabe says ZANU-PF supporters should retaliate when attacked but the MDC is saying if its supporters are attacked, they should report to the police even if the police do nothing about the report, so that we keep records for the future of who the perpetrators of violence are in the run-up to this election’.[40]

Tsvangirai also rebuked the police for protecting ‘ZANU-PF thugs’ and applying the law selectively. If elected President he would, he said, establish a ‘truth and justice commission where the perpetrators of violence would be answerable for their crimes’, later promising state compensation for the victims of political violence. Moreover, he warned, ‘anyone who crosses [the MDC’s line on corruption] will be jailed straightaway’.[41] But footage of his 2000 rally at which he asked Mugabe to ‘go peacefully’ or risk being removed violently, was recurrently cited in the state-controlled media, despite the Supreme Court’s dismissal of his prosecution under s 46 of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act, which it struck down as unconstitutional.

Assassination ‘plots’

Starting on 14 February 2002, the state-controlled media also repeatedly cited and/or ran video ‘evidence’ of an alleged plot by Tsvangirai to assassinate Mugabe,[42] reportedly part of the CIO-directed campaign to re-elect Mugabe.[43]  In turn, the MDC expressed concern that the attack on its Harare headquarters on 18 February 2002 was actually a failed ZANU-PF attempt to assassinate Tsvangirai.[44]

The ‘assassination video’ was filmed in November 2001 by Ari Ben-Menashe. He described himself as a friend of Mugabe and his consultancy firm was in the pay of ZANU-PF at the time he made the video.[45] It had been delivered to ‘the government’ in December 2001. The quality of the film was so poor that no-one on it could be identified, and the version shown on ZTV was shown conclusively to have been doctored.

Twelve days before voting, Tsvangirai was questioned by police assistant commissioner Boysen Mathema.[46] The police were quoted[47] as saying they were charging him with treason. In Zimbabwe, treason is a capital punishment charge. The police also interviewed the MDC’s Secretary-General, Welshman Ncube, and shadow agriculture minister, Renson Gasela, on the same charge. They were shortly afterwards alleged by the state-controlled media to be among 10 MDC MPs contemplating quitting politics or joining ZANU-PF! Lawyer Innocent Chagonda confirmed that all three of his clients had been charged with treason and had submitted warned-and-cautioned statements in which they denied this charge.[48] None of the three was detained. The police said they would ‘proceed by way of summons’ once they had tied up ‘the loose ends’.[49] Emmerson Mnangagwa was quoted as saying:

‘Mr Tsvangirai will not be arrested before the election. He will be allowed to continue with his election campaign and I do not think that the police will take any action that will prevent him from taking part in the election… It is not ZANU-PF which has plotted to assassinate President Mugabe but the MDC leader. I do not understand why some people view the case as a ploy by ZANU-PF to have Mr Tsvangirai arrested’.[50] (Our emphasis)

Robert Mugabe reportedly assured South Africa’s deputy president, Jacob Zuma, that Tsvangirai had not been charged with treason, which Zuma was reported to have relayed in Cape Town as the CHOGM meeting started in Coolum, Australia. [51]

It was reported[52] from Chikwakwa that villagers had been told that Tsvangirai had withdrawn from the election because he had tried to kill the president.

Local and international concern was expressed over this transparent electioneering smear, which one publisher thought was intended ‘to cause confusion amongst voters and possibly create a constitutional crisis should the MDC win, as looks likely’.[53] However, it was also possible that the groundwork was being laid to detain the MDC’s top leadership after the election.[54]

ZANU-PF’s ‘assassination plot strategy’ later took further twists, being backdated to April 2001 when Job Sikhala and Tafadzwa Musekiwa were alleged to have been part of an earlier plot. It emerged that AFZ commander Perence Shiri had contacted Sikhala when government intelligence was said to have reported that Mugabe was likely to lose the election even before nominations had been called for.[55]

Tsvangirai was widely criticised for having shown poor judgment in becoming involved with Ben-Menashe’s consultancy firm, and in his handling of the fall-out from the ‘treason video’ affair. Ironically, however, his very naivete may have garnered him extra sympathy, as an inept, maybe even ‘non-politician’, from voters absolutely fed up with political shrewdness perceived as untrustworthy dishonesty. A final series of advertisements in the last week of campaigning presented Tsvangirai as an unpretentious, casually-dressed man playing with a child, greeting a middle-aged woman as an equal, and (unusually in a suit) listening to other well-dressed people in a small group, while promising to protect, respect and listen to all Zimbabweans. The contrast with ZANU-PF’s strident assertions of power and their old man depicted shaking a fist was telling.

Policing violence

Deputy Police Commissioner Godfrey Matanga was quoted as telling Harare Regional Magistrate Godfrey Macheyo that, in issuing a police firearm to a civilian (in this case war veteran Joseph Chinotimba, facing a charge of attempted murder of an MDC supporter using that weapon),

‘there was no need for a certificate to be issued once police had established the calibre of the recipient... We issued the firearm and signed the voucher after ZANU-PF had requested weapons to protect the Head of State and his Cabinet ministers … there was no written agreement on the terms of issuing of the firearms’.[56] (Our emphasis)

Under what law ZANU-PF is able to requisition police arms for a function that is legally performed by the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Presidential Guard of the Zimbabwe National Army, was not specified. The magistrate ruled illegal ZANU-PF’s donation of this uncertificated weapon to Chinotimba and jailed him for five months (two suspended) under the Firearms Act. He was later bailed. ZANU-PF youth reportedly threatened the magistrate who handed down this sentence.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police received a 155% increment to their pay at the beginning of 2002, and reportedly another 13% two months later.[57] Unnamed policemen were quoted as saying:

‘We are under strict instructions from our bosses not to attend to MDC reports. That’s why you see we do not give them CR (crime report) numbers any more. We have no choice but to turn a blind eye’.[58]

‘We have been totally incapacitated by the conflicting statements from politicians. They tell us to arrest people mounting illegal roadblocks but when we do arrest them, we are ordered to release them immediately. In fact, if we arrest them we are rebuked and branded MDC sympathisers’.[59]

There were more reports of politically-motivated transfers of police officers thought to sympathise with the opposition. Marondera OIC Assistant Commissioner Chipembere was reportedly presented by ZANU-PF youth and ‘war veterans’ with a list of 20 ‘unfriendly officers’ who had worked hard and professionally to ‘clamp down on lawlessness in Marondera’, inter alia by arresting ‘war veterans’ whom they were later ordered to release.[60]

Amid official claims that Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri had toured all provinces to ‘appraise officers on the political situation’, some who attended his meetings reportedly insisted that he was campaigning for Robert Mugabe and telling officers not to vote for the MDC.[61] MDC Secretary-General Welshman Ncube was reported by the state-controlled press to have threatened to purge the Zimbabwe Republic Police of ZANU-PF sympathisers should it win the Presidential Election.[62]

The police said they received 520 reports of violence between 1-25 February 2002. They arrested 410 ZANU-PF and 250 MDC supporters.[63] 70 more cases were recorded over the first weekend of March. Inspector Tirivavi was quoted by the state-controlled media as saying in all 70 cases ‘some MDC members were arrested, a fact that indicates how the party is trying to destabilise the peace that existed in this country for the past 21 years’.[64] Some thought it merely indicated political bias, or perhaps higher-level instruction to balance political responsibility for the violence while Zimbabwe was under such close international scrutiny.

Officers commanding the police districts of Harare Central, Suburban, South and Chitungwiza declared ‘zero tolerance’ for political violence in their Operation Dzikama. They banned catapults, machetes, axes, knobkerries, swords, knives, daggers and all ‘traditional weapons’ until the end of March 2002.[65] It was not clear whether ‘traditional weapons’ included newly-cut sticks, iron rods, bicycle and other chains, electrical cords, fanbelts and the like which ZANU-PF supporters had recurrently used against MDC supporters over the past two years. Police in Matabeleland North followed suit, after soldiers had retaliated against their own assault by ZANU-PF youths.[66]

But rural police generally did less, and more slowly, to contain violence in the countryside, apart from ordering all white farmers still on the land to hand over all licensed firearms (at the same time as the state-controlled press pictured black farmers patrolling their lands with guns).[67] Reports continued of assaults while members of the police looked on.[68]

The Zimbabwe National Army was reported to have sent on leave and deployed throughout the country 10 000 soldiers to campaign for Robert Mugabe, of which the official spokesman claimed no knowledge and refused to comment or investigate further.[69] Soldiers were reported to have assaulted party workers putting up MDC election posters in Dzivarasekwa.[70] In mid-January, the army enforced a 12-hour curfew imposed on Zaka district.[71]

Political harassment

(a) By the State

Electoral Supervisory Commission member Joyce Kazembe condemned the scale of ZANU-PF violence which had been driven, she reportedly said, by the party’s access to the State and its resources.[72]

The National Youth Training Service was based at the Border Gezi National Training Centre in Mount Darwin and confirmed to be military in nature despite denials in Parliament by a deputy minister.[73] The trainees wore military-style uniforms. The NYTS was run by retired Brigadier Boniface Hurungudu out of the Ministry of Youth Development, Gender and Employment Creation in ZANU-PF’s headquarters, with staff of 30 of whom half were serving or retired army officers. Among the other half was reportedly Francis (‘Black Jesus’) Zimuto, a war veteran who spearheaded the early farm invasions.[74] Many of the first 974 graduates were hastily pressed into instructor roles at training camps established in Luveve (Bulawayo), Mabvuku (Harare), and Harare’s peri-urban areas of Seke and Ruwa.[75] Other training centres were established in Guyu (Matabeleland South), Mshagashe (Masvingo, under Zimuto), Dadaya (Midlands) and Binga (Matabeleland North).

The national youth trainees, called variously ‘green shirts’, ‘green bombers’ and ‘terrorists’,[76] demanded ZANU-PF membership cards from travellers. They were also reported to have raided and harassed rail passengers without ZANU-PF cards before being ejected from the train by police.[77]

On 6-7 January, together with ZANU-PF youth, they reportedly sealed off Bindura by mounting illegal roadblocks on all roads leading into the town, demanding from travellers and townsfolk alike the new ZANU-PF membership cards (costing Z$85 each).[78] Later in January they were deployed into Harare and other cities, first into high- and then low-density suburbs. Some 40 were later arrested, and reportedly ‘sprung’ from Harare’s Kuwadzana police custody by Joseph Chinotimba, the ‘self-proclaimed commander of farm invasions’, who reportedly claimed he was acting on orders ‘from the top’.[79] Among those arrested at urban roadblocks were the MDC’s Manicaland provincial chair, detained for five hours without charge before being released.[80]

The MDC listed 145 militia bases established by ZANU-PF and the NYTS graduates which it called ‘terror camps’ and ‘torture bases’.[81] It was unclear whether any police action was taken against these bases, 40 located in Mashonaland Central, 23 in Mashonaland West, 16 in Mashonaland East, 14 in Harare, 12 in Bulawayo, with another 29 spread over Matabeleland North and South.[82] Manicaland (nine) and Masvingo (two) hosted fewer. ZANU-PF said these camps housed youths involved in food-for-work and self-help projects.

Morgan Tsvangirai called on Robert Mugabe to disband this militia, without success.[83] Tsvangirai himself was briefly detained at Harare airport by ‘State agents’ who reportedly accused him of travelling on a false passport.[84] Earlier Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority workers ‘had been instructed by their seniors to punish him’ and arrived at 10pm to disconnect his domestic electricity.[85] At Sese business centre in Chivi (Masvingo province), police fired into the air and hurled teargas at his convoy of vehicles which had stopped to greet supporters lining the roadside.[86] In the fortnight before polling, Tsvangirai was harassed by being detained for police questioning on various pretexts on an almost-daily basis.

In Mutare, police without a search warrant demanded to search the MDC offices at 2am, on the suspicion that they housed ‘arms of war’ – which were not found during the permitted but unlawful search.[87] Some MDC activists in Harare were subject to armed search with a warrant for drugs, but political documentation was unlawfully removed when no drugs were found. In Mashonaland Central, the MDC suspected that ‘the police want to arrest all MDC leaders in the province so we cannot organise our polling agents’.[88]

Among the opposition MPs detained by the police and allegedly assaulted and tortured by soldiers were Abednico Bhebhe (MDC, Nkayi) and Peter Nyoni (MDC, Hwange East).[89] They alleged they and 38 MDC supporters had been stopped at an illegal roadblock manned by war veterans and ZANU-PF youths armed with prohibited weapons (including knobkerries, axes and machetes). It is unclear whether they confiscated all or part of these weapons before heading to Nkayi police station to report the roadblock. They were reportedly stopped, and fired on, by a ‘hastily-organised’ army roadblock, and charged by the Nkayi police with possession of specified weapons, which they said belonged to the war veterans at the illegal roadblock.[90]

Local authorities had already booked Bulawayo’s White City Stadium and Harare’s Zimbabwe Grounds for Morgan Tsvangirai’s final rallies before polling, when the police notified the MDC that Robert Mugabe would be using them instead. The Bulawayo City Council refused to allow the MDC booking of its facility to be superseded. The MDC had to appeal to the High Court over both problems when the police appealed against an earlier provisional order granted to the MDC to use White City Stadium. Justice Maphios Cheda upheld the MDC’s right to use White City Stadium, ordered Cain Sibanda, the officer commanding the Bulawayo police, to pay costs, and refused leave to appeal.[91]

(b) By ZANU-PF and/or ‘war veterans’

Throughout the country, the local leadership of the MDC was recurrently attacked. In Manicaland the MDC reported that between October 2001 and January 2002, it had logged 6 085 assaults on its members, with another 7 728 supporters having fled their homes to escape the violence.[92] On 19 January 2002, in the Midlands, Muchenje Mpofu, the MDC chair for Mketi ward in Mberengwa East constituency was attacked by ZANU-PF youths and bled to death at the site of his attack.[93] Matabeleland North, particularly Hwange, Lupane and Nkayi, saw horrific violence against MDC parliamentarians and supporters who fled to the relative safety of Bulawayo.[94] ZANU-PF youth, ‘war veterans’ and former ‘dissidents’ were all reportedly involved in this terror campaign.[95] The State President was reported as claiming he had been informed by his Minister for Home Affairs that the MDC had unleashed violence in Matabeleland North because their candidates had lost some ward seats in the rural district council elections.[96] In Bulawayo, Harare and Chinhoyi, MDC offices and other property, including vehicles, were damaged in attacks by ZANU-PF.

The Harare attack was condemned by observer teams from South Africa and the SADC Parliamentary Forum.[97] In Chinhoyi, ‘Top Six’, led by Paul Pindani, numbered many more than six, bussed into Chinhoyi from other parts of Mashonaland West and the Midlands. This gang had been responsible for terrorising especially white Chinhoyi residents from two weeks before the South African and Commonwealth observers were attacked after an MDC rally in the town.

In Kwekwe, ZANU-PF youth blockaded the roads and prevented MDC supporters from attending a rally addressed by Morgan Tsvangirai. Although 6 000 got through, thousands were forced to attend a hastily-arranged rally addressed by ZANU-PF’s Emmerson Mnangagwa (who lost the Kwekwe parliamentary seat in June 2000), as ZANU-PF youths went door-to-door reportedly threatening to torch the houses of those who did not attend.[98]

Some ZANU-PF leaders, including Minister for State Security Nicholas Goche (on whose farm an MDC supporter’s bodily remains were found in mid-January 2002), called on their followers to stop mounting illegal roadblocks and demanding ZANU-PF memberships cards from travellers. In Mashonaland Central province these calls went unheeded. Nor did the police intervene.

Electoral malpractices

(a) Vote buying

A month before voting, a public works programme was extended to pay impoverished individuals Z$500 and households a maximum of Z$2 000 per month. Z$150 million of tax-payer funds were reportedly used. As noted by those ZANU-PF members in the Midlands who chased out the Social Welfare officers disbursing this cash, it was not enough to buy 50 kgs of maize meal even if any had been available to buy.[99] Reflecting the polarised level of political suspicion nationally, some 300 Rusape residents who received government assistance (Z$700 each) two days before voting, were reported to have interpreted their ‘money-for-work’ welfare payments as a political gimmick controlled by ZANU-PF youths and ‘war veterans’.[100]

Ahead of polling, Government also managed to find part of the money it had owed the City of Bulawayo for many years for unpaid services, and a start to the Zambezi Water Project was (yet again) promised ‘shortly’. Robert Mugabe was reported personally to have presented a cheque for Z$38 million to the Minister of Local Government and National Housing at his Epworth rally, stating that it was for self-help projects in Epworth, Mabvuku and Tafara.[101]

Bribery of the smaller parties by ZANU-PF to nominate party candidates to split the opposition vote was also alleged.[102] However, at the Nomination Court, both ZAPU and ZANU refused to endorse candidates claiming to represent them. Wilson Kumbula and Paul Siwela were forced to stand as independents, but some thought ZANU-PF may have paid their Z$10 000 deposits which they lost. ZANU-PF women were reportedly ‘caught redhanded’ by election observers bribing voters with Z$100 each in Lobengula, Makokoba and Mzilikazi (all in Bulawayo), to vote for Mugabe.[103] The state-controlled media reported numerous allegations of white farmers trying to bribe rural voters.

(b) Treating

Government had been responsible for the food shortages as well as preventing churches and NGOs from distributing food. Ahead of the poll, Hatcliffe residents and civil servants were given or promised residential land for building, while the country was assured by the State President and his wife that no-one would starve – this after at least three people, including two children, had already starved to death. In Matabeleland, solidly opposition territory, ZANU-PF reportedly dished out food at its presidential rally in Umzingwane. ‘Treating’ is, of course, forbidden by s105 of the Electoral Act, and a Daily News editorial put the point very neatly –[104]

‘Maize is being distributed to areas Mugabe is due to address rallies. That is why the recurrent theme at all of Mugabe’s rallies is that the government will not abandon the people to starvation. The people are being promised maize distribution after the rallies and this, coupled with people being bussed to the rallies, explains the attendances’.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme and other NGOs reported that the political environment was hampering their distribution of relief food.[105]

Dr Frank Guni, Pesident and Director of the Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with AIDS (ZNNP+), wrote from the USA where he had fled, that he had received death threats for resisting, as a director of the National AIDS Council, instructions from Cabinet sanctioned by Robert Mugabe to divert NAC funding[106] to the government’s new BEAM programme, which pays school fees for indigent children. According to Guni, the children assisted under BEAM with NAC funds were ‘neither orphans nor desperate’, but children of ZANU-PF families. Moreover, he claimed that he and ZNNP+ were ordered not to disburse any funds to Bulawayo, Masvingo (both of which had elected MDC mayors), part of Manicaland, or gays and lesbians. Guni claimed himself to have been threatened with death when he refused ‘to use AIDS funds to convince our 1,5 million-strong membership to vote ZANU-PF’.[107]

Mugabe also promised, at the start of his campaign, that by the end of February anti-retroviral drugs would be available to HIV+ patients at government hospitals. Acting health minister David Parirenyatwa confirmed to journalists following up this promise that ‘the drugs are not available in government hospitals’.[108] Possibly unfulfilled promises should not be regarded as attempted treating or vote buying?

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