The violence of 2008: an evaluation A. Background 1. Sources The authors accessed information compiled from formal interviews with 681 people countrywide, who reported human rights violations between 1 January and 30 April 2008. In addition to this, a further approximately fifty interviews were conducted with people claiming human rights violations between 1 May and 10 May 2008. Key informants in the health profession and civics were also consulted on events. There are unequivocal indications that during May the violence has intensified and become more vicious. In the first ten days of May, numbers of people seeking medical support in Harare for increasingly severe and sadistic injuries has almost equalled those seeking treatment in the whole month of April. On the 8 May, Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) reported that “in the last 24 hours alone, 30 victims of violence have been treated for limb fractures in Harare hospitals and clinics and supplies of Plaster of Paris bandages are reported to be exhausted in most health centres.” 44 According to our records, in the entire of April around 50 fractures were treated in these same centres. ZADHR further reported: One hospital in Harare has treated an average of 23 victims a day over the last week. On the 8th of May, there were a total 53 more seriously injured patients (13 females and 40 males) admitted to wards in 3 Harare hospitals. These included one 30 year old man on life support in the intensive care unit with severe, irreversible head injuries and a 30 year old man with severe soft tissue injuries to the buttocks and secondary renal failure, also on life support. Both of these patients died later that day… Among the other patients, 20 had defensive, forearm or hand fractures, 5 had leg fractures and 1 fractured ribs. Fourteen patients had severe injuries to the buttocks from blunt trauma which required surgery for the removal of necrotic (dead) tissue. The perpetrators in all cases were alleged by the victims to be war veterans and Zanu PF supporters. Similar patterns of injuries are being reported from other hospitals. . As the formal database of the authors currently ends with cases up to 30 April, the April data has been dealt with quantitatively in this report and will provide the pre- and post election discussion of violence. Violations that have taken place in May, including incidents of unprecedented brutality, have been presented and discussed qualitatively rather than quantitatively, as information about events in May is still being collected and formally evaluated. 45 It was generally agreed that the months leading into the recent election were among the most peaceful pre-election periods in Zimbabwe since 1995. However, within days of the end of the election, civil society began claiming high numbers of people being assaulted. At first, these reports focused on violence in Harare itself, but within days the reports of violence began to flood in from rural Mashonaland. ZANU PF officials have continued to deny the scale of the violence, and have also claimed that MDC is responsible for the violence rather than the arms of the state or ZANU supporters. It was clear to the state by 30 March that they had lost the presidential and the parliamentary elections. Media reports indicate that in the early days of April, Mugabe considered conceding defeat, but that by around 3 April the hard liners in his party, together with the Joint Operational Command, had decided that there would be no such concession, and that ZANU PF would remain in power by brute force. Since 44 45 ZADHR statement, 8 May 2008. This report ends with a shocking personal account of the massacre at Chaona, Mazowe, on 5 May. 21