Preparing for the Worst in Zimbabwe

Felix Muzambi, 64, a taxidermist and grandfather, displays a bloodstained shirt he wore on the day he was beaten by a gang of ruling party youths. (The Washington Post)
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Ruling party officials denied they were using violence to win the runoff.

"I've not heard anything of that sort, but I'm sure that if there is anything like that, the police have the capacity to handle it," said Didymus Mutasa, national security minister.

Yet Zimbabweans see the police as Mugabe's enforcers, not impartial arbiters of peace and justice.

Last October, Carlos Mudzongo, 35, wore an opposition T-shirt into a rural area and was assaulted by five ruling party youths, he said. When he sought help from the police, three officers beat him with broomsticks and electrical cords, he said. Such stories are common here.

Ruling party youths, dressed in white T-shirts bearing the logo and acronym of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, have begun assembling outside the houses of opposition activists and singing a warning in Shona that translates as, "The war has come."

On Wednesday morning, they stopped outside the house of Leonard Mandaza, 59, an opposition candidate who also won a seat on Marondera's town council. He said that most of the youths appeared to be from out of town, but one was from Marondera and showed the others where to focus their energies. Mandaza said he expected more visits soon.

"They will act at night," he said.

"I will fight like a dog, teeth and legs," he added grimly. "If they want war, then we can retaliate."

The hard words signal a dramatic shift in mood since the first days after the election, when even some of Mugabe's closest associates were urging him to step down. Since then, it has become clear that he has decided to fight, with the support of the military, police, party youths and veterans of the nation's liberation war who have renewed their assault on white-owned commercial farms after several years of relative quiet.

In Marondera, nearly every party activist has a story of beatings or torture. They have been roused by police in the middle of the night. Their children have been taunted and in some cases abducted. Several say they fear to venture outside after dark.

Opposition activist Diamond Tenfara, 50, a retired accountant, said he has been abducted by the secret police so many times that he can no longer count the episodes. But he recalled the most memorable form of torture used on him: He was stripped naked, then forced to sit on a chair wired with electrodes.

"It was hot everywhere," Tenfara said.

Muzambi, who keeps his bloodied shirt folded in a bedroom closet in hopes of some day testifying against his attackers in court, said the assault was not the most frightening day of this election season. That came two weeks later, when the secret police pulled up outside his house in three pickup trucks. By the time he found his way outside, they had handcuffed and bundled off his brother, 37, and his son, 32.

The two emerged from custody two days later, their bodies battered, Muzambi said. His son had a broken left arm; his brother a broken right thigh bone.

With more attacks being chronicled every day, and with a purge underway against some officials on the electoral commission, Muzambi said he figures the runoff has already been lost. Or rather, stolen by a ruling party determined to win.

"If they burn down two houses," he said, people "won't vote MDC again. They will run."