immediately accused of supporting the opposition and were thoroughly beaten with sticks. One of the sticks entered LM’s left eye, cutting the eyeball and introducing foreign matter into the eye. By the time she managed to return to Bulawayo several days later, the eye was very infected. After three days on antibiotics to control the infection, she was operated on, but the damage to the external eye as well as the retina is extensive. She is very unlikely to recover any vision in the eye. As she is thirty years old and single, losing her eye is a huge blow. She is depressed and disorientated, and weeps all the time. She simply cannot understand what happened or why. 4. Demographics of victims • • Pre election, the average age of victims was 32 years Post election, the average age of victims rose to 37,5 years. This is the oldest average age for period of violence that the current authors have recorded. Usually average age of victims is around 32 years. The rise in age coincides with the perception of doctors and others that the very old are not being spared the current brutality, with several victims being over 80 years of age. • 3% of victims needing medical care have been under the age of 12, with the youngest being several babies under one year of age (N = 18). All of these children were injured in the post election period. One was a baby beaten unconscious on its mother’s back. 5% of victims have been over the age of 60 (N = 24) 70% of victims are aged 21 to 40 (N = 365) the remaining 16% being aged 41 to 60 (N = 82) • • • Figure 7: AGE of victims, all areas, 1 Jan to 30 April However, the demographics suggest much of the violence is targeted. The bulk of those being victimised are of productive age (86%). This age group is also the most politically active. The younger people are, the more likely they are to support the opposition: people under the age of 35 have no lived experience of the liberation war and therefore are less persuaded by the rhetoric of ZANU PF. They have spent most of their adulthood in a nation that is deteriorating on every parameter. The vast majority of this age group have no formal employment and no possibility of it, and have been the group most easily won over by the opposition. 44