Intense pressure on MDC
As I write this, the Police are mounting a full scale search of the MDC Head Office in Harare. This must be the 6th time that they have raided the Head Office. On Saturday the MDC called a national meeting of all provincial leaders plus our National Executive and the Members of Parliament. The main topic was a reorganization of the Party to reflect the changing situation in the Party and the country. The meeting was raided by armed riot police who arrested two of the delegates and the rest were forced to disperse before concluding their business. Our offices in Bulawayo were burned to the ground last year, the offices in Kwe Kwe were also burned with no folow up action even though both incidents were in broad daylight and witnessed in one case by senior Zanu PF leaders. Our Harare Provincial offices were raided and all the equipment taken away by the Police. The Mutare Offices have been raided several times.
Our top leadership is all under threat of prosecution under trumped up charges and will eventually appear in Court before Judges who are known Zanu PF activists and supporters. Our Youth Chairman has been arrested and charged on four different charges in the past month. One of these charges relates to an incident over 2 years ago. One of the other charges was laid under a bit of defunct Rhodesian law and order legislation. Literally hundreds of activists are in jail or have been jailed and one of our major costs as a Party in the past three years has been legal charges and bail payments for activists on every kind of legal charge you can name.
When imprisoned at local police stations our people are held in rooms with dozens of others without proper clothing or blankets and in totally unhygienic conditions. They are often held for days without charge and we often have difficulty in finding them when they are arrested as they are moved without notification. They are denied normal rights and even medical attention under these circumstances and are often beaten to the point of real physical injury.
This blatant use of the Police and the Courts to hound and intimidate the legitimate political opposition is completely unacceptable behavior in a modern state in the 21st century. Is this the kind of activity that NEPAD is going to tolerate and condone? When Mugabe arrives in Johannesburg this weekend for his appearance at the World Summit on Sustainable Development he will be afforded all the trappings of a visiting head of state - the red carpet, a guard of honor and an escort to his hotel. When he walks into the Conference Centre he will exhibit that normal strutting arrogant posture that is his specialty. I am sure there will be delegates (as at the AU summit in Durban recently) who will cheer and clap this man.
As an African I am ashamed of our leadership, I am disgusted at the arrogance they display when the leadership of the world is gathering at our doorstep. They are a disgrace to Africa. We deserve better. Mugabe is no more a democrat than I am a black African. He should not be allowed to get away with this sort of legal outrage on a stage at a world summit.
Eddie Cross Bulawayo, 27th August 2002
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