me is my father. We had an eight bedroom house – they destroyed all the walls then burnt everything. They came for me at night but I had run away, leaving my parents thinking they wouldn’t harm them. My mother’s backbone is injured. [victim from Mutoko] The community fabric is being shredded as neighbour turns on neighbour. Furthermore, such acts indicate – and so far rightly so – high levels of assumed impunity. C. The Violence 1. Violence over time The most obvious finding has been the dramatic escalation of violence since the election: from January to 29 March, which was election day, there were 63 political violations recorded. Jan: Feb: March: April: 7 4 52 618 Figure 3 Reported violations by month, Jan to April 2008 Between 30 March, the day after the election, and 30 April, there were more than ten times as many violations as in the previous month of March, with 618 political violations recorded. This clearly supports the contention that the pre-election period was comparatively – although not entirely - peaceful, as well as showing the dramatic escalation of violence since then. 69 It needs also to be remembered that current knowledge of violations is likely to amount to less than 10% of the true scale of what is happening for reasons mentioned previously. 69 As mentioned in the previous section, there were some brutal incidents prior to the elections, and general threats and intimidation which have led to MDC appealing the outcome in 52 constituencies. 32