Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, Vol. 7 [2004], Iss. 1, Art. 4 2004] Zimbabwean Human Rights Crisis quashing dissent. In 1982, a campaign was launched against the Ndebele population of the Matabeleland region in southern Zimbabwe, ostensibly to suppress armed dissidents who operated there. Massacres, rapes, torture, arbitrary detention and destruction of property were carried out by security forces over several years. 6 Local human rights groups have concluded that half of the adult residents of Matabeleland were tortured in 7 this period. In his determination to make Zimbabwe a one-party state, Robert Mugabe systematically destroyed or disarmed his opponents, and by 1990 he was without significant challengers. For the next decade, a period of relative calm prevailed in the country, but popular discontent with the government was on the rise and new forces for social change emerged. Academics, the student union and the labor movement became increasingly critical of corruption, the continued use of repressive 8 legislation, and the absence of respect for basic political rights. In 1997, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), a large coalition of human rights organizations, churches, trade unions, women's groups, and others, was formed on a platform for a new constitution containing greater rights protections. Subsequently, a new political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), emerged out of the labor movement, led by Morgan Tsvangerai. III. A NEW CENTURY OF ABUSE The situation in Zimbabwe began to deteriorate rapidly in 2000, a year that was marked by the defeat of the government in a popular referendum on the adoption of a new constitution. Among other things, the constitution that was proposed by a government-appointed commission would have extended presidential powers. This proposal was rejected by the Zimbabwean people following an intensive "no" campaign launched by the NCA and the newly formed MDC. That same year, despite political violence and widespread manipulation of the electoral process by the ruling Zanu-PF party, the MDC succeeded in winning fifty-seven out of the one hundred and twenty popularly elected seats in parliament. Realizing that his hold over the population was rapidly diminishing and that he might not be able to cling to power for much longer, President Mugabe retaliated. He seized on land reform as an emotive issue that could be manipulated to garner popular support in Zimbabwe and that echoed favourably throughout Africa. 6 See WAGES OF WAR, supra note 2, at 29-30, 136-37 (noting that in 1983 at least 1500 Ndebele civilians were summarily killed by security forces and thousands more were beaten, raped and detained; and that in 1984, in addition to further killings, detentions and beatings, several hundred thousand rural Ndebele citizens were systematically deprived of emergency drought relief.) See also LEGAL RESOURCES FOUNDATION, supranote 6. 7 See UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE, ZIMBABWE AND THE POLITICS OF TORTURE 1 (2002), at http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr92.pdf. 8 See Brian Kagoro, The Opposition and Civil Society, in ZIMBABWE'S TURMOIL: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS 1, 7 (Richard Cornwall ed., 2003). http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yhrdlj/vol7/iss1/4 4