Opposition takes up arms as Zimbabwe slides into civil war

Published on Thursday 10 July 2008 22:38

FRUSTRATED supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Zimbabwe have begun arming themselves to fight back against ruling party security forces and militias, leading research organisations said yesterday.

The country has never been as close to civil war as it is now, following the controversial one-candidate election of 27 June, in which Robert Mugabe was returned to power for another five years, says the report, entitled Saving Zimbabwe.

The report is to be published today by South Africa's publicly funded Human Sciences Research Council, based in Johannesburg, and the Africa Policy Institute, based in Nairobi and Pretoria.

Kwandiwe Kondlo, the chief of the council's democracy research programme, said the failed electoral process was "a recipe for civil war because there is no yielding ground. A low-intensity war has begun and the situation is getting out of control."

He said violent retaliation was not MDC policy, but localised "democratic resistance committees" had been established to counter the violence of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. "Hell is being let loose," he said. "We do know almost certainly that some of them (MDC supporters] have begun (military-style] training.

"The culture of violence that comes from Zanu-PF is gradually becoming part of the culture in the MDC."

The MDC said that the confirmed death toll of its supporters since the first election, on 29 March – in which MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai outpolled Mr Mugabe by 47 per cent of the total vote to 43 per cent – has risen to 110.

The latest person to die was a 70-year-old woman who was beaten and thrown on to a fire in the nickel-mining town of Bindura, the MDC said. She was attacked by Zanu-PF militiamen in June but died only yesterday from "terrible burns."

More than 1,500 people, including MDC lawmakers, remain in police custody, a party spokesman said.