Human Rights Forum Report: Who was responsible?
Overview
This report is a follow-up to “Who is Responsible?: A preliminary analysis of pre-election violence in
Zimbabwe”, which was released in June 2000 by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. It sought to
catalog emerging allegations of gross human rights violations committed during the run-up period to the
June 2000 Parliamentary Elections and aimed to establish certain facts about the nature of political violence
during that time. When the report was released, the Forum had taken more than 60 statements which proved
that Zanu (PF), their supporters and many state organs were engaged in a systematic, pre-meditated
campaign to terrorize local communities into voting for the party or not voting at all. While there were
allegations across the political divide, only a very small number implicated opposition parties and there was
no evidence that these parties were engaged in a broad-based, systematic campaign. Now, almost a year
after the June 2000 parliamentary elections, roughly 1000 statements from victims of political violence and
information gathered from victims who have testified in the election challenges at the High Court have
further substantiated these allegations.
In the course of compiling this information, the Forum has begun to put together a picture of who
committed acts of violence, how often, and in what manner. This follow-up report, “Who was
Responsible?: Alleged Perpetrators and their Crimes During the 2000 Parliamentary Election Period”,
contains a list of alleged offenders by name, implicating a number of key officials and detailing some of the
most particularly egregious cases of violence. It is important to stress that this list is woefully incomplete; it
represents only those perpetrators named by victims in statements or in the course of court proceedings.
Compiling a complete list of offenders and offences should be the job of a much-needed independent
judicial commission to examine all cases of violence surrounding the parliamentary elections and
subsequent by-elections. This report seeks only to provide a glipse of the massive scale of violence
undertaken during the elections and identify who is alleged to have been responsible. Many of the alleged
perpetrators still hold key positions in the government and other institutions and could continue their
violent activities in future elections.
The perpetrator list contains 644 names but the actual number of perpetrators and the number of political
crimes they have committed is exponentially higher, due to the fear or inability of victims to report their
experiences. Without a powerful independent judicial commission, it is impossible to determine the number
of perpetrators who committed acts of political violence during the first half of 2000. One independent
report has estimated that there were well over 200,000 cases of political violence in the first half of 2000. 1
Given that 635 perpetrators were named from only about 1000 statements, it is clear that there are many
thousands across the country who took part in acts of violence in the parliamentary election period. But the
fact remains that the very first act of political violence committed was as heinous and damaging as the
hundreds of thousands that followed.
Unfortunately, none of these alleged perpetrators are likely to stand trial. The General Amnesty for
Politically-Motivated Crimes, which was gazetted on 6 October 2000, absolved most of the perpetrators
from prosecution. While the Amnesty excluded those accused of “murder, robbery, rape, indecent assault,
statutory rape, theft, possession of arms or any offence involving fraud or dishonesty”, very few persons
accused of these crimes have been persecuted. For example, in Mberengwa East, where nearly 230 persons
were arrested, only Wilson „Biggie‟ Chitoro, an accused murderer, has thus far been detained for any length
of time for any crimes relating to the June 2000 elections. No one has yet stood trial. During the Buhera
North election challenge High Court Justice James Devittie requested that Attorney General Andrew
Chigovera arrest suspected murderers Joseph Mwale and Kainos Zimunya for their role in the petrol-bomb
1 Reeler, A.P. (2001), The Leaders of Death: State Sponsored Violence in Zimbabwe, p. 20
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