Voters fleeing Zimbabwe terror state

Sunday Times:

ALL across Harare yesterday, men, women, and children separated from their parents, including a boy of 12 with suspected malaria and a fragile 15-year-old girl, were hiding from a state-run terror campaign unleashed against Zimbabwe’s opposition.

Beaten and driven from their homes in the countryside and crowded townships in the reprisals that have followed President Robert Mugabe’s apparent electoral defeat three weeks ago, they made their way to the city by any means possible.

They came in their dozens, by bus, by train, by communal taxi. Such was one frightened man’s determination to escape that he walked for many miles with bare feet. Even those who did not need hospital care were still in pain days after their arrival from beaten, swollen limbs.

The anonymity of the big city was protecting them. In the provinces, doctors and nurses had been warned by militants not to treat “political cases”. Those who fled were under no illusion.

Indeed, they had been warned by the tormentors who had burnt many of them out of their homes that, if they returned, they would be killed. There was at least one death during the week.

They were from every walk of life: carpenters, tractor drivers and teachers, bottle store owners, gardeners and dozens and dozens of unemployed, a reflection of the plight of people in a country suffering 80% unemployment and 200,000% inflation.

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This reminds me of a country and western song titled Don't You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me. When it comes to Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe, the answer is clearly no. This tragedy seems to never end and for the people it just keeps getting worse. At some point the world needs to say that is enough. We are not going to let you hurt them anymore.