Financial Gazette (Harare)
Nelson Chenga
27 September 2008
IT is just before midnight as the haulage truck pulls off the tarmac in Mudzi district 220km from the capital, Harare, to drop off a hitchhiker.
Across the highway to the Mozambican border post at Nyamapanda, several other hitchhikers sleeping in untidy heaps on the ground briefly poke out heads from their blankets, disturbed from their sleep by the whirr of the truck's engine.
Next to the commuters, an assortment of baggage comprising dried palm leaves and bulging sacks containing items for sale in the capital, lies in a jumbled pile.
And as the truck drives off a dozen or so over-excited women carrying sacks of maize meal pass by on their way from a grinding mill at Nyamuyaruka business centre.
The blare of a jukebox in a nightclub can be heard from the business centre where everything usually springs to life late at night twice to three times a week when electricity is briefly restored.
A distant drumbeat echoes deep into the moonlit night.
Three months ago this scenery would have been unimaginable.
Soon after disembarking from the truck any traveller would have been accosted by ZANU-PF militia and forced to identify himself by chanting the party's slogans before explaining his/her presence in the area.
If lucky enough to escape a beating for some frivolous reason, he/she would invariably be stripped of some of his/her possessions as indiscriminate looting and extortion became the norm.
During that time women would not have dared walk to the grinding mill late at night.
Neither would the hitchhikers sleeping on the roadside have risked spending the night in the open during the run-up to the June 27 presidential run-off.
Back then much of Zimbabwe's countryside was cordoned off as ZANU-PF violently pushed out the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for its victory in the March 29 general and presidential elections, albeit without a clear majority.
Along came marauding bands of armed militants purporting to be war veterans of the 1970s independence war. They bore the clear message that the villagers had blundered by not voting President Robert Mugabe back into office and their mission was to uproot all Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) elements in the district to pave the way for the re-election of President Mugabe as Zimbabwe's leader.
Then, all hell broke loose. Command bases sprouted all over the district at which all suspected MDC supporters were forced to renounce their support for the opposition and dispossessed of their livestock, food and property as punishment for having voted for the party.
When the pool of suspected MDC supporters thinned out, the militias turned on hapless villagers, demanding to be fed while manning the bases and roadblocks they randomly set up. Retailers in the rural areas were compelled to send money and food to the bases as well.
But as the old nostrum: "what goes around comes around," says, the chickens are coming home to roost.
It is pay back time for those that fomented violence. The election re-run, which President Mugabe contested unopposed after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out citing violence against his supporters, is now water under the bridge.
Harassed Mudzi villagers are now demanding justice for the misdeeds of the ZANU-PF militias.
As a form of reprisal against those who extorted property from them and perpetrated acts of political violence in the district, the villagers have employed unorthodox means -- the use of voodoo.
Mudzi, one of the country's least developed districts, is still strongly bound in cultural beliefs steeped in the paranormal.
And with readily available examples of this phenomenon, news of the impending vengeance has had a devastating psychological impact on the ringleaders of the command bases. As the rainy season nears word has spread across the district that people should expect unnatural thunder and lightning seeking out and targeting base commanders and their accomplices.
Terrified to death by the prospects of impending danger one ZANU-PF youth leader from the district's Chikwizo A ward approached his chief for protection but found the traditional leader in a bad mood. The chief, still furious over a consignment of maize sent for his traditional agricultural scheme (Zunde Ramambo) to feed orphans and the aged that was looted at one of the bases, reportedly told the youth leader that he had no power to protect him. The chief is now demanding back all the maize, which was part of a 30-tonne food aid allocation from the government distributed in Chikwizo, soon after the June 27 elections.
Many of those implicated in the scam however, went into hiding soon after the political talks between ZANU-PF and the MDC started in July. The majority fled into Mozambique to wait for things to cool off.
The signing of an agreement between the two parties last week seems to have given some Mudzi villagers impetus to pursue their retribution agenda. In the district's Donzwe area some villagers recently invited a notorious base commander, who had forcibly seized their traditional beer during the June political disturbances, for a drink.
The villagers reportedly bought 20 litres of traditional beer and asked their tormentor to drink it all up alone while they watched.Halfway through the forced binge, the man collapsed and is reportedly in severe trauma and can still not walk weeks after the punishment.
According to experts alcohol can act both as food and a poison, which damages the liver and brain. "If you drink too much alcohol it poisons your brain...One of the main jobs of your liver is to remove poisons and toxins and make them safe -- as the liver does this with alcohol it is turned into another poison that damages the liver cells...when the toxins produced by drinking outstrip the defences," experts say.
A fact sheet prepared by Bupa, a United Kingdom-based global health and care non-profit making organisation says: "Drinking a very large amount at any one time (binge drinking) can lead to unconsciousness, coma and even death."
With the country's health care system having long collapsed due to lack of drugs and personnel, the Donzwe man, has little chance to recover.
In the political agreement between the political parties, the three leaders appealed for tolerance and a healing process to move the country forward toward political and socio-economic recovery
But with the number of incidents of retribution increasing, last week's agreement faces a great hurdle.
Mudzi villagers seem determined to ensure that justice is done before they can move forward.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Financial Gazette. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
