Not many of the individual incidents of abuse are headline catching in world terms, and the vast majority go entirely unrecorded, but the cumulative impact on life in Zimbabwe is harrowing. Recording and publicising the problem has been made close to impossible because of draconian laws that have shut down the only independent daily newspaper and thrown all foreign correspondents out of the country. Yet the scars being left by state sponsored violence are undeniable. Youth militia Two hundred and fifty thousand school leavers each year have little or no prospect of formal training or employment, and this problem is exacerbated for children who are not prepared to undergo the politically biased and brutalising national youth service training; youth militia training is now a prerequisite for entering employment in the civil service, among the biggest employers left in Zimbabwe.15 Many youths, both male and female, who have entered the youth militia programme since its inception in 2001 have emerged traumatised and have fled the country. Those whose training has coincided with election periods have been used by the ruling party to conduct a brutal campaign. In some rural areas, youths who refuse to volunteer for the training are victimised; young people have fled to avoid both the training and the persecution/lack of opportunities that accompany not having completed it.16 Elinor Sisulu of the Crisis in Zimbabwe office in Johannesburg made the following comment on the prospects for Zimbabwe’s youth: Zimbabwe is not a place for young people at this time. It really is not, whether they are MDC or whether they are ZANU PF. If they are MDC, then they are victims of violence, if they are ZANU PF they are in the “Green Bombers” [youth militia] and they are victims because they are forced to become perpetrators of violence. This needs recognition and there must be concrete programmes for young people [in South Africa]. The “land revolution” The Zimbabwe government has portrayed the repressive clamp down in Zimbabwe as being part of a legitimate “land revolution”, and all human rights violations as somehow linked to white farmers; the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a grassroots trade unionist-led opposition party has been portrayed as “British sponsored”, and the repression of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe is portrayed as a noble revolution against recolonisation.17 None has doubted or disagreed that there has been a need for land redistribution, including the MDC, but the well orchestrated abuse of a much needed programme by the government has resulted in new injustices. 15 The Solidarity Peace Trust, National youth service training – “Shaping youths in a truly Zimbabwean manner”, September 2003, for details of this programme. See Appendix One, Case One, for testimony of a school girl abducted into a youth militia camp and raped for three days. 16 Numerous interviewees in the compilation of this report cited avoiding or deserting youth militia training as their reasons for having fled Zimbabwe; also Solidarity Peace Trust, Sept 2003, ibid; see also media reports: IRIN (UN), “Green bombers deserting poor conditions in camps, 23 Jan 2004; Panorama BBC TV, 2 March 2004; Cape Argus, (SA), 5 September 2004, SA Police “as cruel as Mugabe’s militia”; Zim Online (SA), Teachers in Zimbabwe: “we are very afraid”, 19 August 2004. 17 Election 2005 is being contested by ZANU PF as an “anti-[Tony] Blair election”, for example. This total denial of the reality, ie, that many millions of Zimbabweans have consistently voted for the MDC for 5 years, is typical of the ZANU PF claim that there is no real internal opposition to its rule. 22