Runoff politics Mugabe style

Sunday Telegraph:

The militia brought Mary Nyandoro into the school yard blindfolded and in handcuffs.

"Witness the baptism of traitors," Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF thugs told us. In the cold of the early morning, we gathered around as instructed.

Mary's crime had been to vote for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe's blighted elections. She was a peasant farmer, about 30 years old, frail and defenceless.

They frogmarched her into the yard, then they made her do press-ups while bricks were loaded on to her back. Any lapses attracted the fiery boot of George, the commander – a heavily built man of about 35 who claimed to be a war veteran, one of those who supposedly fought in the war of independence and who now keep Mr Mugabe in power.

Then the militia descended on Mary like a group of vultures fighting for a carcass. Booted feet and clenched fists struck her all over her body, on the face, the ribs, the buttocks. Her tattered blouse was torn open.

They ignored her plea for forgiveness and, in agony, she writhed from one side of the militia wall to the other – blood, so much blood, gushing from her battered red mouth and nose. Her legs struggled to hold on.

Suddenly, a group of about 30 women broke into song and dance, denouncing Mary and pouring buckets of cold water on her clothes as she rolled across the mud. "Watch out sell-outs, the mighty of Zanu-PF is fast catching up with you," they sang in the Shona tongue.

As they sang, some women whipped her. Something hot was used to burn her forehead. They left her virtually naked.

The militia had been camped at the Chitangazuva primary school, about 90 miles east of Harare, since it closed in March before the election, turning its classrooms into a torture camp. They drew up a list of "traitors" – people who had failed to vote for Mr Mugabe – and set about tracking them down to teach them the error of their ways.

At 4am every day, the militia break down the doors of their targets' homes and march the victims to the school where malnourished local people are made to sing Zanu-PF revolutionary songs. The victims are tortured and then left in pools of blood while the militia return to the villages to extract more victims.

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This goes beyond normal despotisms descending into brutal sadism. The people would be better off if Mugabe just seized power rather than beating a mandate into the population. If you see this story or post on a liberal blog let me know. People who have conjured all sorts of horrors in their imagination about President Bush have probably never considered anything this wicked. It is the way of control freaks though.