HARARE – Barely per week after being elected as an area councilor for Zimbabwe’s major opposition birthday party, Womberaiishe Nhende and a relative had been pulled out in their automotive via unidentified males, shot with a stun gun and handcuffed.
They had been then bundled right into a pickup truck and pushed about 70 kilometers (greater than 40 miles) outdoor of Harare, the capital, the place they had been whipped, overwhelmed with truncheons and interrogated, and injected with an unknown substance, their attorneys say.
Having been wondered over what their Citizens Coalition for Change birthday party is making plans after August’s disputed and troubled national election, the ordeal ended when the 2 males had been dumped bare close to a river, the attorneys allege.
Their tale is not new within the southern African country, which has an extended historical past of violence and intimidation in opposition to opposition to the ZANU-PF birthday party throughout its 43-year rule.
There are indicators that the rustic has now slipped into any other technology of brutal oppression, at the same time as newly reelected President Emmerson Mnangagwa speaks publicly of “peace, love, harmony and tolerance.”
Behind those sweet words, more than a dozen opposition CCC figures — from elected representatives to officials and activists — have been been arrested by police in the three weeks since the election, the party says. Others have been targeted with violent abductions.
“It is the beginning of a new term and we are seeing people being abducted and tortured, people’s homes being burnt down, and lawyers arrested for simply doing their job,” mentioned Doug Coltart, one among Nhende’s attorneys, who was once himself arrested.
“It only creates the impression that we are going to see further breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe.”
Mnangagwa, a former guerrilla fighter referred to as “the crocodile,” gained a 2d time period as president final month in an election rejected by the CCC as flawed and wondered via world and regional observers, who cited a lot of issues, together with a climate of fear and intimidation.
That appears to still be a mainstay in Zimbabwe six years after renowned autocratic leader Robert Mugabe was ousted in a coup and replaced by Mnangagwa in 2017.
Coltart and another of Nhende’s lawyers, Tapiwa Muchineripi, were detained and charged with obstructing justice for telling police that they couldn’t question Nhende and relative Sanele Mkuhlani over their beatings while they were sedated, they said. Coltart isn’t new to harassment, having been arrested by authorities for doing his job at least four times before, but he said the latest crackdown so soon after the elections doesn’t “bode neatly for the following section.”
Mnangagwa and his birthday party have again and again denied allegations of the use of repression to overwhelm dissent. Yet the president, who grew to become 81 on Friday, described the opposition’s allegations as “noises from some little boys” and threatened to imprison “anybody who wants to be nonsensical and bring chaos.”
Mnangagwa’s often-repeated statement that Zimbabwe is a mature democracy below him is noticed as a facade via many, together with distinguished world rights teams like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. A more true image of Zimbabwean politics may well be the deep crimson and black welts and rips within the pores and skin visual throughout Nhende’s again and decrease legs, the results of a lashing with a heavy sjambok whip, his attorneys mentioned.
Nhende recounted his enjoy and confirmed his wounds in a video launched via the CCC, the nearest challenger to ZANU-PF within the election.
“They beat us up trying to extract information about our post-election plans,” Nhende mentioned within the video, throughout which he winces in ache as he speaks.
The sight of an elected consultant appearing accidents from a beating is not unusual in Zimbabwe.
More than 15 years in the past, then-opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai was once photographed via the arena’s media with a swollen and badly bruised face, one eye totally closed, after having been detained via police throughout the Mugabe technology and significantly overwhelmed.
It seems little has modified in a rustic that gives unrealized possible for Africa, given its wealthy agricultural land, mineral assets that come with the continent’s greatest lithium deposits, and possible oil and gasoline unearths.
Police introduced a brand new bout of arrests of opposition figures final week — together with a newly elected CCC lawmaker, on fees of tried homicide and malicious injury to assets throughout the election. The CCC says two of its lawmakers have not too long ago been arrested. Other representatives had been reelected final month whilst in detention.
Party spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi has left the rustic after police mentioned they had been searching for to arrest him for failing to wait a court docket listening to in 2019, and charged him with attack and injury to assets. CCC deputy spokesperson Gift Siziba was once arrested on fees of inciting violence at a football sport.
Amnesty has raised the case of any other CCC activist, who it says was once kidnapped and tortured within the days after the election.
The CCC and analysts say there’s a transparent post-election clampdown now that the world observers have left.
“All this post-election repression is to suffocate the opposition,” Zimbabwean political commentator Rashweat Mukundu mentioned. “What we are seeing now is an indication that there has been no reform. Elections have failed to resolve the governance issues in Zimbabwe, so the repression is a pattern that is likely to persist until the next elections.”
After visiting Nhende and Mkuhlani in the hospital, CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, who lost to Mnangangwa in the presidential election, said that his party was under siege and facing a backlash.
“After freedom of choice, you don’t expect torture,” Chamisa said. “It was a sham election, a disputed election, a flawed election. But beyond that, you torture people for what reason?”
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