Organized Violence by State Agents and Ruling Party Supporters
There has been no perceptible change in the pattern of organized violence since the signing of the Abuja agreement. Some incidents have been widely reported, such as the attack on MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai on his way to a political rally in October. That particular incident was noteworthy because, according to witnesses, a police inspector was present when some fifty people attacked Tsvangirai's convoy. The inspector took no action, and a police spokesperson later denied that he had been there.48
Zimbabwean human rights organizations have documented forty-eight deaths in political violence during 2001, nineteen of them in the four months from the beginning of September when the Abuja accord was signed. In October, November, and December the Human Rights NGO Forum recorded 333 cases of torture and 533 of unlawful arrest or detention.49 These figures are likely to be underestimates. In almost all cases the perpetrators of organized violence are state agents or supporters of the ruling party. In almost all cases, the victims are supporters of the MDC, farmworkers, farmers, and civil society activists such as students and trade unionists.
Also targeted are professionals, such as teachers and medical personnel in government service. One of the bizarre and under-reported aspects of the Zimbabwe crisis is the extent to which the ruling party's supporters are attacking the state itself, particularly those parts of it that are concerned with the delivery of services to the public. Teachers in Gokwe in Masvingo Province, for example, report being forced to attend ZANU-PF meetings and to buy party cards. In some cases they have been forced out of the district.50 In September, according to press reports, war veterans' leader Joseph Chinotimba led an attack on officials at the Harare municipal authority. Chinotimba and the other attackers were municipal police officers.51
On September 28, 2001, police prevented a demonstration by the National Constitutional Assembly, a coalition of organizations leading the demand for constitutional reform, in Harare. Some 150 riot police armed with batons and teargas, and with dogs, blocked all entrances to African Unity Square, where the demonstration was to assemble. The demonstrators had obtained a court order in advance, instructing police not to interfere with the demonstration. The officer in charge ignored it.52 On November 21, police reportedly arrested thirty-five people attending a protest against amendments to the electoral laws. Police armed with shotguns, teargas, shields and batons had deployed in advance of the demonstration, which was not violent.53 Eleven University of Zimbabwe students were reportedly arrested on November 27, when they tried to protest over the death of another student, Lameck Chemvura, who was thrown from a train by soldiers the previous week.54
Although much violence has taken place in the context of land invasions, one of the notable threads that runs through almost all cases reported is either the complicity of the statutory security agencies or their failure to take action. Zimbabwean human rights organizations have recorded literally hundreds of incidents.
Take, for example, this testimony of an MDC supporter from a village near Mushumbi Pools in Guruve North District. He and several others were told to go to the war veterans' Chitepo Base. This is how one of them described his treatment:
[Joseph] Masauki [the war veterans' chairman] then began to catalogue our "crimes" as MDC members though they were otherwise lawful activities. Masauki and another war veteran called Emmanuel Kamukiyana and Bibby and Zuze then ordered us into an ant-bear's hole. We were then ordered to yap and bark like dogs and come out with a kill. After being ordered out our legs were tied up in ropes, our t-shirts removed and our trousers lowered. We were asked to lie prone and then assaulted on the buttocks with thick poles, slapped on the face and kicked with booted feet. This continued for about 2 hours. We were then ordered to roll in hot sand then tied up and further beaten. After that, buffalo thorns were smeared all over our bodies. The process was repeated in which we were told to roll around in hot sand. We were dizzy after that but were beaten up when we fell down. This lasted for about 5 hours. They made us grind our teeth and swallow sand. We were released around 4pm.
We failed to seek medical treatment because if you are treated at any hospital beaten once, this is known and the police refuse to supply referral forms.
Four other testimonies corroborate this one. Some of them state that a police constable was present for part of the torture. All of them said that they had not reported the matter to the police, as the local police chief is a war veteran and has said that he will not help MDC supporters.55
The same pattern of police complicity with the ruling party and its militias is exhibited in another incident from Mberengwa East reported by Human Rights NGO Forum. On 10 November, four men approached Ravengai Sikhucha and another person, accusing them of having committed an "offense"-the distribution of MDC material. The four were the police officer in charge of Mataga Police Station, himself a war veteran, another police officer, an official of the Central Intelligence Organization and another man. Ravengai Sikhucha's companion escaped but Sikhucha was punched, kicked and beaten with sticks. He was then forced into a Nissan truck and driven away. He was later found dead. The police say that he fell off the back of the truck.56
Bulawayo
In the late evening of November 5, 2001, Cain Nkala, a Bulawayo war veterans' leader, was abducted from his home by ten men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. He was taken away in a truck and later strangled to death. His body was found in a shallow grave near Solusi University on November 13.
Nkala had been charged in connection with the abduction and "disappearance" on June 19, 2000 of Patrick Nabanyama, the election agent for MDC MP David Coltart. Nkala was alleged by several witnesses to be one of seven war veterans who beat Nabanyama at his home in Nketa, bundled him into a station wagon and took him to the nearby War Veterans' Association offices. Nabanyama was never seen alive again.
After several days' delay, police opened a docket on Nabanyama's abduction. The seven war veterans, including Nkala, were charged, but the case had not come to court by the time of Nkala's abduction and murder. Nkala and the others were charged with aggravated kidnapping rather than murder because no body had been found. In October 2000, the president proclaimed a general amnesty for all offences of pre-election violence, except for murder and rape. Since the seven involved in Patrick Nabanyama's "disappearance" had been charged with a lesser offense, they would benefit from that amnesty.
Over the days after Cain Nkala's abduction, police conducted an illegal search of the MDC offices in Bulawayo and arrested a number of MDC supporters in connection with the case. While the provincial chairperson of ZANU-PF described the abduction as "terrorism" and attributed it to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the private press speculated that it may have been carried out by a rival faction within the War Veterans' Association.57 According to this version, Nkala felt that he and his colleagues had been made scapegoats for the Nabanyama abduction and was threatening to reveal the complicity of more senior figures.
At 11:30pm on November 12, 2001, Noma Nabanyama, the daughter of Patrick, was picked up from her home by members of the Central Intelligence Organization. After confiscating MDC documents, human rights videos and her passport, they took her with her aunt and sister to Pumula police camp. They demanded to see the photographs of Noma with her father in Australia. Noma Nabanyama had in fact travelled to Australia in advance of the postponed Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (originally scheduled for October 2001, but postponed to March 2002 because of the events of September 11, 2001, in the U.S.) to lobby on her father's case and to publicize the human rights situation in Zimbabwe. She was questioned in detail about her visit to Australia, before being released.
The following day, Cain Nkala's body was discovered. Somewhat surprisingly, a Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation television crew was present. ZBC broadcast that police had been led to the grave by MDC members who had confessed to the crime. Some insight into the value of any confessions emerged during subsequent bail hearings. One of those charged, Khetani Andrew Sibanda, testified that he had confessed to the crime and implicated others among the accused after he had been assaulted by plain clothes police officers:
They started kicking me all over the body until I fell off a chair on which I was seated. It was then that I told them that I was prepared to tell them the truth and we agreed that I would do so in Bulawayo.58
Sibanda showed the court a wound that he said had been caused by being bitten by Nkala during the kidnapping.59 Yet the medical report showed the wound had been caused by a sharp instrument, not by teeth.60
Another of the accused, Remember Moyo, also told the court that he had been beaten into signing a confession:
I was handcuffed at the back and I was in leg-irons. The police started assaulting and kicking me. They forced apart my legs and Detective Inspector Martin Matira kicked me in the private parts and I lost consciousness. They then took me to the Mbembesi Police Station where I was detained.61
Meanwhile, the government and the media controlled by it had been exploiting Nkala's murder to escalate tension. Vice-President Joseph Msika made a speech threatening "if they are looking for a bloodbath they will certainly get it."62 The Chronicle called in its front-page headline: "Arm war vets, says province." The article beneath it argued that "without arms, war veterans are vulnerable to attacks by opponents."63
The arrival of the ZBC's chief political correspondent to cover the discovery of Nkala's body was fortuitous and unexplained. On camera, the decomposing body was dragged out by the heels. Home Affairs Minister John Nkomo implied that the murder was the work of those with training from the former Rhodesian elite counter-insurgency unit "...this is an operation very reminiscent of what the Selous Scouts used to do and we can read and see very clearly a similar pattern in this particular area."64
On November 16, war veterans and ZANU-PF leaders assembled in Bulawayo and marched to City Hall, under police escort and armed with axes, sticks, and sjamboks (leather whips). Along the way bystanders were targeted for violent attack, especially whites. One old woman had her windscreen smashed and was beaten. She later had to have glass surgically removed from her eye.65 Schoolchildren were also attacked. The police took no action to stop the violence.66 At City Hall the marchers assembled to hear brief speeches against "terrorism" from the march leaders: former Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa and local war veterans' leader Jabulani Sibanda. They then attacked City Hall, heading for the mayor's office. The mayor - a member of the MDC elected in September - had already fled but they ransacked his office, taking his briefcase and destroying papers. It was noted that ZANU-PF members of the City Council had not parked their cars at City Hall that morning, suggesting that the attack was premeditated.67 Still the police did not intervene.
The demonstration then went to the Bulawayo MDC office, still accompanied by police. The latter did nothing as the demonstrators knocked down a wall and smashed windows to the office. An eyewitness described what happened next:
I saw a black 20 litre plastic container being taken from a police open truck land-rover in a canvas canopy, army green in colour. I saw the 20 litre container being taken into the MDC offices. This happened as the group was recklessly beating onlookers. Realising this, we all ran for dear life. When we finally came out we heard people shouting that the MDC offices were burning.68
This account is confirmed by another eyewitness account in the possession of Human Rights Watch. As the building burned, the police remained in front of it, preventing anyone from tackling the fire. Onlookers attacked the police and then took burning material from the building to the headquarters of ZDECO, the Zimbabwe Distance Education College, owned by Dr. Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, one of the ZANU-PF leaders present at the demonstration. The building was burned and serious damaged.
At this stage, none of those arrested in connection with the murder of Cain Nkala had been charged or had even been visited by a lawyer - in breach of the constitutional requirement that they be brought before a judicial authority within forty-eight hours. The numbers of those arrested was increasing. The government press announced, completely incorrectly, that one Bulawayo MP, Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, had fled the police. In fact the reason he was not at home was that he was in Parliament in Harare. On his return to Bulawayo he handed himself in to police. Dulini-Ncube, an elderly diabetic, was held in police custody in very poor conditions. The authorities delayed several days before releasing him, even after a Supreme Court order granting him bail.
Two others of the fourteen charged in connection with the murder, Simon Spooner and Silas Sibanda, were successful in their applications for bail. But when they reported to the police in compliance with their bail conditions, they were redetained, Spooner on December 7. The police said that they were appealing against the High Court decision to grant bail. Yet this can only be done after leave has been given by the Supreme Court and the bailed person may not be redetained in the meanwhile.69 Spooner was finally released on December 15.70
The events surrounding the murder of Cain Nkala have been examined in some detail because they exhibit characteristics that run through the current situation in Zimbabwe:
· Abuse by the police (the torture of suspects) and their complicity in the abuses of others (the November 16 demonstration).
· Partiality on the part of the police.
· A constant stream of provocative statements and inaccurate reports from official spokespeople and the government-controlled media. Often this appears to be directly in contempt of judicial proceedings, yet those responsible are not rebuked, let alone brought to justice.
· Impunity for the ruling party and its supporters to carry out acts of violence against the opposition and the public, unchecked and unpunished.
48 Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Political Violence Report: November 2001, December 2001.
49 Ibid., and Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Political Violence Report: October 2001, November 2001; and Political Violence Report: December 2001, January 2002.
50 Daily News, December 10, 2001.
51 Financial Gazette, November 28, 2001.
52 IRIN, September 28, 2001.
53 Daily Telegraph, November 22, 2001.
54 Daily News, December 3, 2001.
55 Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Political Violence Report: November 2001, December 2001.
56 Ibid.
57 A view that was later reinforced by interviews with members of Cain Nkala's family. See the Standard, November 18, 2001.
58 Herald, November 27, 2001.
59 Herald, November 28, 2001.
60 Daily News, December 4, 2001.
61 Herald, November 28, 2001.
62 Herald, November 12, 2001.
63 Chronicle, November 12, 2001.
64 ZBC, Newshour, November 13, 2001.
65 Eyewitness testimony in the possession of Human Rights Watch.
66 Ibid.
67 Eyewitness testimonies in the possession of Human Rights Watch.
68 Eyewitness testimony in the possession of Human Rights Watch.
69 ZWNews, December 7, 2001.
70 Standard, December 16, 2001.
