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Zimbabwe militias attack workers
Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF has pushed 40,000 workers off farms in a post-election campaign targeting supporters of the opposition ahead of a possible presidential run-off, farmers' groups said yesterday.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:43 May 9, 2008
Harare: Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF has pushed 40,000 workers off farms in a post-election campaign targeting supporters of the opposition ahead of a possible presidential run-off, farmers' groups said yesterday.
The groups said armed youth militias loyal to President Robert Mugabe had driven workers off farms in a bid to swing votes in a second round ballot. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won most votes in the first round on March 29.
"It's ongoing so they are going to displace more people," John Worsley-Worswick, CEO of the Justice for Agriculture Trust (JAG), said in Johannesburg.
Zimbabwe's government rejects accusations from the opposition, human rights groups and Western countries that the ruling ZANU-PF party has launched a campaign of violence to ensure Mugabe keeps his 28-year hold on power.
ZANU-PF says Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change has carried out political attacks.
The opposition has not said whether it will participate in the run-off. It believes Tsvangirai won the outright majority he needed to avoid a second round. But if Tsvangirai does not contest, Mugabe is automatically declared the winner.
Gertrude Hambira, general secretary of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union of Zimbabwe said the government was acting as if it were a crime to back the opposition.
Security agents
"We have had security agents going out to the farms, addressing the farm workers. Some of them saying that we need to discipline you because you voted for the opposition. It's really bad," she told a news conference in Johannesburg.
Four hundred workers were hiding in the bush and three are still in hospital after being assaulted, she added. In another sign of a crackdown on Mugabe's foes, Zimbabwean police arrested the editor of a privately owned weekly that is highly critical of the president over its publication of an opinion piece by a leading opposition politician.
Raphael Khumalo, chief executive of the Zimbabwe Independent Media group which publishes The Standard, said Davison Maruziva faced charges over an April 20 article by Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway faction of MDC.
The Standard has urged Tsvangirai to boycott the presidential run-off. ZANU-PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence in 1980 in a ballot held alongside the first round of the presidential election.
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