Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum: Report on pre-election political violence in Mberengwa
Introduction
In the period leading up to elections violence, threats and intimidation were used extensively to coerce
voters. Politicians of the ruling party and their supporters made statements indicating that the ballot would
not be secret and that reprisals would be taken if people voted in certain ways. Some had been warned
that the ruling party had ways of finding out which party each voter had voted for and those that did not
vote for the ruling party would ‘face the consequences’. Voter education came too little too late, thus
those voters that were brave enough to go to the ballot were not aware of their right to a secret ballot in
which the choice of who should govern them was theirs.
Many of the victims have been severely injured, some maimed for life. Along with pain and fear, some
have either lost their jobs or are unable to return to them. Others live with the emotional trauma that the
threats and intimidation caused them. None of the victims have been left unscathed by political violence.
It is something that most of them will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum – the “Human Rights Forum” – has previously issued a
number of reports in connection with the widespread violence that has characterised this general election.
These reports were based upon both the evidence of actual victims of violence as well as the evidence
from secondary sources such as journalists and other eye witnesses to the violence.
This present report deals with the area of Mberengwa in particular. However, it is indicative of the huge
scale of targeting of members of opposition parties and non-politically connected persons throughout the
country. Office holders and supporters of parties in opposition to Zanu (PF) were the primary targets of
political violence, in particular those belonging, or suspected of belonging to the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC). People whose political affiliation was unclear were not spared. Few Zanu
(PF) members were exposed to any violence.
The following report will go into great detail about the nature of violence and intimidation that
characterised the run up to elections in Mberengwa (both East and West constituencies). This report
contains observations and factual material on the violence and intimidation extracted from first hand
reports of the victims of political violence in Mberengwa.
The data from the report is based on an epidemiological approach, and a household survey was conducted
throughout the constituency in nearly every ward. By the end of the election the Human Rights Forum
had received only 22 cases from Mberengwa East, whilst over 300 cases emerged from the community
survey. It is thus clear that there are significant differences between the “passive” capture of data from
persons seeking help and the “active” capture of cases from a community survey. The difference between
“passive” and “active” is roughly 1:30, and this needs to be appreciated when assessing the scale of the
election violence nationally.
A small team of researchers were trained in interviewing techniques, and all interviewers used a standard
human rights reporting form developed by the Human Rights Forum. Although many individuals did not
wish to be interviewed, a large number did, and more data continues to come in. The large number of
arrests of perpetrators of violence in the pre-election period following the elections helped considerably in
allaying peoples’ fears and facilitated this research. However, the Amnesty recently granted to most of
these perpetrators will clearly re-create a climate of fear and will make future data capture very much
more difficult.
Population background for the area
Situated in the province of Midlands in southern Zimbabwe. The total population of Mberengwa is 182
527 with the breakdown of gender for males and females being 85 996 and 96 531 respectively.
Population density is 26.5 pers/sq km in this densely populated area where the average size of a
household is 5.6 persons.
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