ZIMBABWE: THE FACE OF TORTURE AND ORGANISED VIOLENCE 1. Introduction For the past five years Zimbabwe has been racked by an economic, social, political and human rights crisis, which no one inside or outside of the country has been able to reverse. The European Union, the United States of America and other Western nations have applied selective financial and travel sanctions against President Mugabe and other Zanu-PF leaders, and some of these powers have also made unsuccessful attempts to challenge Zimbabwe’s human rights record in international fora, including the UN General Assembly and the UN Commission on Human Rights. These actions have had little discernible effect. Certain African Governments, led by South Africa’s President Mbeki, continue to rally around the Zimbabwe Government, apparently finding sympathy with Mugabe’s argument that some Western nations, led by the United Kingdom, have tried to isolate him and his Government because of the radical land distribution exercise launched in 2000.1 Even as Zimbabwe prepares for the 31 March 2005 general parliamentary election the official Zanu-PF campaign is simply and overtly “anti-Blair”: the rhetoric is that a vote against Zanu-PF is a vote for re-colonialisation, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) being portrayed as nothing more than a front for Western, especially UK, interests. Human rights groups, on the other hand, have consistently pointed to the widespread organised political violence, including the use of torture, which marred the June 2000 parliamentary elections and the March 2002 presidential election, and which have also been a marked feature of subsequent mayoral, local government and by-elections. Over the past five years there have been numerous national and international reports by reputable organisations which have documented these abuses and concluded that the vast majority of the perpetrators of this violence and torture have been persons and structures under the control of the Mugabe Government: the police, the army and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), the youth militias, the so-called war veterans, and Zanu-PF party structures.2 In the face of these reports, including one from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), some of Mugabe’s external allies have gradually tried to nudge him towards staying in power through “free and fair elections.” The South African Government in particular seems keen for the 31 March 2005 result to be accepted as one freely and fairly arrived at. What both it and the 1 Zanu-PF denies that the land reform programme was suddenly implemented in 2000 as a pretext and method for staying in power. However, the violent and widespread invasions of commercial farms began in early March 2000, a fortnight after the Government lost the Constitutional Referendum which would have entrenched its position, and a few months before the June 2000 general parliamentary elections in which it faced a real challenge in the shape of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The MDC, only formed in September 1999, had been one of the main bodies leading the call for a “No” vote in the Referendum. Faced with almost certain defeat at the polls in a free and fair June election, Zanu-PF unleashed the campaign of terror that continues to this day. All serious players in Zimbabwe recognize the need for land reform, which nevertheless was racially manipulated in early 2000 as a crude populist issue and used to physically attack all those opposed to Zanu-PF hegemony. In the process the rule of law has been destroyed. 2 See REDRESS: ZIMBABWE: Tortuous Patterns Destined to Repeat Themselves in Upcoming Election Campaign, London, November 2004: http://www.redress.org/publications/ZimbabweNov2004.PDF. For a comprehensive survey and analysis of Zimbabwe from the perspective of torture survivors see REDRESS: Reparation for Torture: A Survey of the Law and Practice of Torture in 30 Countries: Zimbabwe Country Study, London, March 2003: http://www.redress.org/publications/Audit/Zimbabwe.pdf. 1