Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Zanu-PF’s Position on Violence ‘To make matters worse – some of us, and some of the other women – when there is a rape or somebody has been raped, there was no mother to tell that somebody had abused you. There was no law, there was no justice where you could report to, there was no court of law. There was what we call ‘jungle law’. You are hurt, that’s it. You just had to keep quiet.. Right now, if you talk to any politician who has gone through the Liberation Struggle, they will try to make it out to be as nice as possible so that they would remain the so-called trusted party cadres. They do not want this country to have a proper history of what actually transpired during the war.’lxviii A 1978 Zanu document, reportedly authored by Eddison Zvobgo, named 57 people on its death list. They included ‘all the black co-ministers in the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia [transitional] government, all the 16 black MPs, and people such as Enock Dumbutshena, James Chikerema, Josiah Hungwe, Olivia Muchena, Ruth Mpisaunga, Thomas Zawaira and James Dzvova’.lxix Zanu-PF advertised an extraordinary threat, claiming that ‘“Your vote is your secret” but chaos and instability out of our secret votes will not be a secret - the referendum aftermath is clear testimony of that... Only Zanu-PF brought peace’. It exhorted voters to ‘Use your vote for peace and stability or else we kiss our country goodbye to the likes of Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone etc’.lxx War veterans Andrew Ndhlovu, ZNLWVA projects secretary and allegedly a former dissident, and Edmore Hwarare, threatened war if Zanu-PF lost the general election.lxxi After the Minister of Home Affairs declined to do so, the Front for Democracy in Zimbabwe petitioned the Attorney-General to prosecute him for treason, sedition, and under both the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act (s27) and Electoral Acts (s103-105). Both Mhlanga and Chenjerai Hunzvi consistently held that only the State President could order the removal of the farm invaders. The State President threatened white farmers with ‘very, very, very severe violence’ if any action was taken against the invaders.lxxii ‘The farm invasions have become more violent, particularly since the election. The objective is clearly retribution against all those who voted for the opposition. The strategy is to subject both farmers and their employees to psychological trauma in the hope that they will throw in the towel and vacate the farms’.lxxiii The State President’s description of white farmers as ‘traitors’ and white Zimbabweans generally as ‘enemies of the state’lxxiv may have breached the Electoral Act, as well as the Constitution (s.23) and the Prevention of Discrimination Act. London-based African Rights, in an open public letter called very early (in February) on the State President to ‘set the tone’ in condemning political violence and upholding the rule of law. Instead, he publicly threatened his opponents that ‘death shall befall them’, a threat which was widely relayed in the international media.lxxv He later declared that the MDC would never (even after his death) rule Zimbabwe.lxxvi Similarly, the governor of Mashonaland Central, Border Gezi, warned opposition parties ‘that ZanuPF is well known for spilling blood’.lxxvii Before the Referendum, Davison Nhaurwa, the MDC’s Shamva district chairperson, was charged under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act s44(1)(a) with bringing the State President into public contempt by obscene and insulting language. He was remanded to mid-February, and applied for the matter to be referred to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the provision under which he was charged contradicted his constitutional right to freedom of expression. Later, in April, he suffered serious head injuries in a political assault, was followed into hospital by CIO personnel, and went into hiding.lxxviii The outcome of his constitutional charge and its referral to the Supreme Court was not reported. 30