Mugabe's killer election campaign

Washington Post:

Gangs of ruling party youths beat to death 11 opposition activists in a single remote Zimbabwean town Monday, setting a gruesome new standard for the post-election violence surging through that nation, according to opposition party officials.

Two large truckloads of youths, led by two senior members of President Robert Mugabe's party, marauded through Chiweshe, a rural area about 90 miles north of Harare, the capital, and beat prominent members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change with branches, gun butts, bicycle chains and whips, party officials said. Four of the victims were teachers, and at least two were elderly.

The deaths brought to at least 32 the number of opposition activists killed in the past two weeks, said party spokesman Nelson Chamisa. Thousands of others have been beaten, tortured, arrested, kidnapped or chased from their homes since the March 29 election, opposition officials say.

"They converged and they attacked," said Shepherd Mushonga, a lawyer and newly elected opposition member of parliament who visited Chiweshe on Wednesday. He spoke extensively with witnesses, including several relatives of the victims, and provided a list of all 11 of the dead. Mushonga said that two were relatives of his.

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There is much more in the article and much more killing and abuse of opposition figures in Zimbabwe. Any result of what purports to be an election that leaves a despot like Mugabe in power will be tainted beyond acceptance by the world community. South Africa's sorry excuse for a President is enabling this travesty by protecting Mugabe at the UN and elsewhere.