Tales of Terror In Zimbabwe

There are few visible signs of an impending deal to break Zimbabwe's political stalemate. Instead there is abundant and growing evidence that Mugabe, who has been in power for 28 years, has let loose his army, secret police and feared youth militias to brutalize the opposition in advance of a runoff that could be scheduled as early as May.

Some victims are fleeing into the countryside with their families. Their broken bodies are filling hospital wards. And some are coming here, to the party's national headquarters, because they can think of nowhere else to go.

Most are sleeping in two large conference rooms, about 40 feet by 40 feet. Crammed into these squalid spaces are young children, babies being breast-fed and dozens upon dozens of adults dressed in the only tattered clothes they have left.

"The number of people is increasing every day," said MDC deputy leader Thokozani Khupe, who is attempting to manage the tumult at Harvest House. "I have received reports that more are on their way to this place. I don't know what we will do."

Mavis Mavhunga, 65, a widow, said four ruling party youths came to her hut before dawn last week to punish her for attending opposition meetings before the election.

"They said at my age I must be old enough to know that this country came through the barrel of the gun. They said I should therefore be grateful" to the ruling party, Mavhunga recalled.

The youths hit her with sticks and fists, then pulled up her dress to lash her across the buttocks. When she fainted, one of the youths poured a bucket of water on her head to revive her so the beating could continue, Mavhunga said, weeping as she recalled the pain.

One of the youths then kicked her arm, breaking it. Two hours into the assault, the youths burned down her hut and left. Mavhunga said she was so weak that neighbors had to carry her to the hospital in a wheelbarrow. Her entire village, she said, is now empty.

Moreblessing Chigadza, 35, said she was working in her field in another village last week, with her 3-month-old tied to her back, when she saw smoke rising from her family's compound. Rushing back, she saw her hut on fire and eight ruling party youths shoving her husband into a white truck with no license plate.

After the truck sped away, Chigadza said, the remaining youths ordered her to set the child aside, then beat her with a motorbike chain. As she tried to run, she said, one of the men tripped her, breaking her leg. She has not seen her husband again.

Another party activist, Takawira Mandere, 34, said he was returning from a political meeting in a rural town April 12 and wearing an MDC T-shirt when he and several friends stopped at a store owned by an officer of the secret police. When the officer demanded that they leave, he said, they refused.

"He said he was going to teach us a lesson," Mandere said. "He said the only way to get order in the area was to kill at least one MDC member so that the sellouts in the opposition know that ZANU-PF means business."

The officer shot Mandere in the right leg, then the left. When the officer went to get more bullets, Mandere crawled away and hid, he said. After treatment at a Harare hospital, he moved into opposition party headquarters, where he has been living ever since.

Timberg reported from Johannesburg.