Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Complaints submitted by Responsibility for violence reported Victims belonged to 4.0% 68.3% 5.8% 41.0% 7.0% 52.7% By polling time, three opposition candidates had fled their constituencies (one to a neighbouring country). Three others were in hiding. One was in intensive care with critical head injuries. One exZanu-PF Independent was wrongly reported in the state-owned media as having withdrawn his candidacy. Few who fled their rural constituencies during the pre-election violence cast their votes: a maximum of 7,5%, to extrapolate from the 300 of 4 000 refugees in Harare whom ZimRights ferried back. After the election, violence resumed. In variations of the pre-election pattern, MDC supporters were responsible for minor assaults (often on a retaliatory basis) against some Zanu-PF stalwarts. Some MDC youth tried to debar peasant farmers (presumed to have voted for Zanu-PF) from selling their vegetables in Harare. But in the high-density suburbs of those towns and cities which had returned MDC candidates (and Kariba), both army and police reportedly assaulted people. MDC celebrations were held ‘against police instructions’ and some parties were broken up. This unsolicited state violence continued until after Parliament opened. New farm invasions also started immediately after the polls closed. Some farmers were ordered off their land and threatened with death if they did not leave. There was little indication that the police would begin to uphold the rule of law. One war veteran responsible for particularly vicious violence, torture and deaths in Mberengwa and Zvishavane was remanded in custody on murder charges, but few others were arrested for the other murders. Nothing seemed to be done immediately to investigate evidence linking some Zanu-PF MPs to direct involvement in the violence and deaths in their constituencies. Then came the blanket presidential condonation of and pardon for most acts of violence between January and the end of July 2000. Media Reportage of Political Violence The bias in reporting political violence was carefully analysed by the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe. This bias went beyond the inflation in the state-controlled media of both coverage and reportage of the ruling party, noted by one observer team: ‘Zanu-PF rallies were covered prominently in The Herald, with attendance figures published being substantially higher than we saw.’lxvii The state-owned media recurrently focussed in specifically partisan ways on opposition parties’ alleged use of violence and on factional disputes within Zanu-PF, some of which involved violence (eg. in Chivi, Harare, Masvingo, Chitungwiza). The MDC complained that the state-owned press was tarnishing its public image. In naming six MPs, a deputy minister, minister and provincial governor as having incited and led violence against its members and/or tried to interfere with the legal process trying Zanu-PF offenders for doing so, it alleged that the State executive was looking for a (media-generated) opportunity to declare a state of emergency and possibly ban it. The MDC later complained directly to the Minister of Home Affairs about discriminatory policing (as well as reporting) of political violence and plots to kill its leaders. In response, the MDC was accused by Zanu-PF of trying to create anarchy in order to force the government to cancel elections, and reported as if this accusation was an accomplished fact. In the end, the MDC was able to campaign freely in only 25 of 120 constituencies and received very little assistance from the public broadcaster in getting its electoral message to the voters in the other 95. It nonetheless won 57 seats. The independent press reported and criticised violence initiated by all parties, but much of the violence, especially in the smaller centres, went unreported even by local papers. 29