Tales of Terror In Zimbabwe

Opposition Supporters Gather at HQ To Escape Violence by Youth Gangs

HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 23 -- The beaten, the battered and the bruised have straggled in from Zimbabwe's terrified countryside over the past two weeks. And they have set up camp in Harvest House, a dingy downtown office block that has long been the headquarters of opposition politics. Now it has the grim, grimy look of a refugee camp in a war zone.

There are children screaming. There are adults starving, or stinking for lack of running water. There are broken bones and bullet wounds and stories of how an election that millions of Zimbabweans thought might be the end of President Robert Mugabe's rule has instead produced violent reprisals against those bold enough to work openly for his ouster.

Martin Mandava, 29, a farmer from Mutoko, one of many Mugabe rural strongholds that supported the opposition in the March 29 presidential election, told of how last week a gang of youths from the ruling ZANU-PF party stoned him, tied his arms and legs, then beat him with sticks. They gashed his head with an ax, he said, and threatened to stab his pregnant wife through the womb. Then the gang leader pulled down Mandava's pants, grabbed his genitals and held out a knife.

The leader asked the gang what should be done to an opposition supporter, Mandava recalled. The answer: His genitals should be cut off, to keep opposition party babies from being born there.

Mandava's wife screamed and covered the face of their 5-year-old child, he said. Then the leader offered to put his weapon away if Mandava could sing a song from Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, the guerrilla war led in the 1970s by Mugabe. Mandava sang the song.

After four hours of abuse, he said, the youths burned down a thatch-roofed hut the family used as a kitchen and left.

"They said my wife should not try to raise alarm or they will kill her," Mandava said. "They also bragged that this is what they had done to other traitors in the area."

Such accounts have become increasingly common in the 25 days since the historic national vote, whose results have yet to be released by an electoral commission run by Mugabe allies.

About 300 opposition activists are living in Harvest House now. Hundreds of other members of the Movement for Democratic Change have been beaten, tortured, falsely arrested or chased from their homes, according to human rights groups. The MDC says 10 of its members have been killed.

Many usual occupants of the headquarters, including opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, are traveling elsewhere in Africa to seek support for their cause on a continent that traditionally has avoided interventions against human rights abuses.

An opinion article in the state-owned Herald newspaper stirred widespread speculation Wednesday that elements of Mugabe's ZANU-PF are angling for a political deal with the opposition, which asserts that Tsvangirai won the election outright. In the piece, an academic with ties to Mugabe's party suggested that both sides agree to a government of national unity led by the president. It would be charged with introducing a new constitution and organizing new elections.

"The details in the story do mirror the feeling by some key members in the party," said a top government official close to Mugabe, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "There is a belief that even a runoff will not help things at all."