The Zimbabwean Experience of Transitional Justice something to do with this, but the violence meted out to the students probably also did little to help them view the government with any warmth. The most celebrated incidents involving organized violence and torture came with the treatment meted out to mostly the inhabitants of Harare during the Food Riots in 1998, and the notorious abduction and torture of The Standard journalists, Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto, in 1999.16 The case of the latter has attracted enormous publicity and exemplified the classical view we all have of torture. Taken by a security agency – it is still not known clearly whether this was the army or the CIO – the two journalists were subjected to beatings, mock drowning, electrical shock, falanga, abnormal postures, and a variety of threats and intimidation. In short, this was what we all understand by torture. To date, there have been no arrests and not even a credible investigation of this statesponsored crime. For the victims of the Food Riots, if you were so unlucky as to have been one, you might have been apprehended by the police or the army, or both, on the street, beaten and threatened, and even then taken into custody as a ‘suspected looter’. You might have been tortured in your own home by the police or the army, together with members of your family and in front of your children. If you could not adequately account for the possessions in your home, you might have been taken into custody as another ‘suspected looter’. You might even have witnessed people being shot or tear-gassed, with vicious beatings taking place all around you, and have been lucky enough to escape completely. In custody, the police might well have tortured you again in an effort to get you to confess to your crime of looting. You would have been kept in crowded and insanitary conditions with many other victims, and been acutely aware of their ill-treatment or torture. You would have been denied bail for several weeks, and then quite probably released for a lack of evidence or a properly formulated charge. In their treatment of the so-called rioters, the security forces – both the police and the army – frequently referred to people as ‘enemies of the state’, reserving special viciousness for students. The compact between the state and its citizens was breaking down again by the end of the decade. There was full conflict between the President and the judiciary and the independent press.17 16  See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Organised Violence and Torture in Zimbabwe in 1999 (Harare: The Forum, 1999). 17  See, again, Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Organised Violence and Torture in Zimbabwe in 2000. International Conference on Transitional Justice, Zimbabwe 39