Reuters - March 12th, 2007

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was ``in bad shape'' on Monday after suffering head injuries while in police custody, his lawyer said, and rights groups alleged he and other politicians were tortured.

Police detained Tsvangirai and dozens of other opposition figures on Sunday and shot dead a man while crushing a prayer meeting organized in defiance of a ban on political rallies.

Political tensions, which have been brewing over the soaring cost of living and President Robert Mugabe's increasingly controversial rule, erupted when riot squads fought opposition youths in the capital for the second time in a month.

A coalition of opposition, church and civic groups called Sunday's meeting to address Zimbabwe's deepening political and economic crisis. Police ordered organizers to scrap it amid fears the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was trying to launch a street campaign to oust Mugabe.

Tsvangirai's lawyer Innocent Chagonda said after visiting a Harare police station where the MDC leader was being held that he was badly assaulted and was taken to hospital.

``He was in bad in shape, he was swollen very badly. He was bandaged on the head. You couldn't distinguish between the head and the face and he could not see properly,'' he said.

Political pressure group National Constitutional Assembly said its chairman, Lovemore Madhuku, suffered a broken arm and a bad head wound in police custody.

``In addition to the killing, they (those detained) were tortured in custody,'' rally organizers said.

``Lawyers ... who visited the detainees report that Tsvangirai fainted three times after severe beatings by the police while Madhuku passed out and was rushed tofor urgent medical attention early this morning,'' they said.

Asked for comment, police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena: ``I wouldn't know about that because these people were arrested in different places.'' But he added that police would use the ''necessary force'' to arrest those threatening law and order.

ANGER, FEAR

Dozens of police riot squads in trucks and on foot, armed with shotguns, teargas cannisters and rubber batons, patrolled Harare's Highfield township on Monday.

``There is lots of anger but also lots of fear after what happened yesterday,'' said a security guard.

Washington called the crackdown ``brutal and unwarranted.'' Foreign Office minister Lord Triesman of former colonial power Britain said: ``I utterly condemn the violent and unwarranted action taken by the Zimbabwe government ... The UK holds Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe government responsible for the safety of all those detained.''

But Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, appeared to be digging in. He said he would seek another term if asked by the ruling party to do so, whether elections are held as planned in 2008 or delayed for two years, state media reported.

``What happened yesterday is a clear indication that we are heading toward social and political unrest, that the opposition is getting bolder in confronting the Mugabe regime,'' said John Makumbe, a leading political commentator and Mugabe critic.

Zimbabwe's inflation exceeds 1,700 percent, the highest rate in the world, with unemployment over 80 percent. The country is battling chronic food, fuel and foreign exchange shortages.

Police spokesman Bvudzijena accused Tsvangirai and others of inciting violence. He said a police patrol killed one man after being attacked by a mob of ``MDC thugs'' on Sunday.

Three police officers suffered severe injuries, an army truck was torched and MDC supporters attacked police using children as human shields, he said.

Under Zimbabwe's security laws, police can detain suspects for up to 48 hours before bringing them to court but can extend this period through a legal certificate issued by a magistrate.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States strongly condemned Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's suppression of protests and said on Monday it was shocked by attacks on opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and others.

``It is absolutely uncalled for and unfortunately certainly representative of the repressive nature of the Mugabe government that peaceful efforts to organize political groups and public demonstrations are suppressed and suppressed so brutally,'' said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

The United States has for years been critical of Mugabe's leadership and relations between the two countries are tense.

Police detained Tsvangirai and dozens of other opposition figures on Sunday and shot a man to death while crushing a prayer meeting organized to defy a ban on political rallies.

Tsvangirai's lawyer said his client was ``in bad shape'' after suffering head injuries in police custody and rights groups alleged he and other politicians were tortured.

``We are shocked by the reports of injuries to a number of opposition leaders and we certainly call on the government of Zimbabwe to provide all medical treatment necessary to these individuals and release them as quickly as possible,'' said Casey.

Mugabe's six-year term ends in 2008, but his ruling ZANU-PF party has proposed extending the 83-year-old leader's rule by two years. Zimbabwe's state-run media said on Monday that Mugabe had said he would seek another term if requested by the ruling party.

Casey said it was hard to imagine how any election in which the hard-line ruler took part would meet international standards of being free and fair.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested with other members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Wednesday after police stormed the party's headquarters, officials said.

Witnesses said armed riot police surrounded and then entered the building in downtown Harare where the MDC leadership had been due to hold a news conference.

``President Morgan Tsvangirai, who was scheduled to give a press conference on the escalating and systemic campaign of violence and intimidation undertaken by theMugabe government in recent days, was among those taken away,'' the party said in a statement.

MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti said all of the MDC officials inside the building were arrested, but it was unclear whether they had been transferred into police custody.

``Their phones are all turned off so we don't know if they are still there or at the central police station,'' he told Reuters.

The raid came as Mugabe was due to arrive in Tanzania for a special regional summit to address the escalating political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

The summit comes more than two weeks after dozens of opposition members, including Tsvangirai, were arrested and reportedly beaten after an aborted rally against Mugabe and his authoritarian government.

The crackdown drew sharp international protests and renewed calls for African nations to tackle Mugabe's 27-year rule over Zimbabwe, which now faces its worst economic crisis in decades along with escalating political tensions.

Derelict properties of first two white farmers murdered in Zimbabwe mirror the country's agricultural collapse.

By Fred Bridgland in Harare

Near the 66-year-old Nhowe Mission school and hospital more than 100 kilometres southeast of Harare, David Stevens became the first white farmer to die in Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's controversial and economically disastrous "land reform" programme.

Under Mugabe's reforms, land was forcibly taken from white commercial farmers and redistributed to landless blacks in the hope that they would begin an agricultural and social revolution.

But today David Stevens' Arizona Farm, once one of the country's most successful tobacco-producing operations, is derelict, its buildings collapsing and its fields reduced to a vista of tall weeds and encroaching bush.

Two journalists from one of the country's last independent newspapers, the weekly Zimbabwe Independent, have been investigating what happened to the farms of the first two white farmers to be killed under Mugabe's reforms.

Augustine Mukaro went to Arizona Farm to assess what has happened to it since Stevens was beaten and tied up with wire in a police station on April 15, 2000 by so-called war veterans, a vigilante group personally loyal to Mugabe. Stevens and his black foreman, Julius Andoche, were then taken from the police station by the war vets into the bush where both were shot dead.

Loughty Dube went to Compensation Farm, on the other side of Zimbabwe, some 500 kilometres southwest of Arizona Farm, where, three days after Stevens' murder, the owner, Martin Olds, was battered with iron rods by the vigilantes before being shot dead. As in the Stevens case, police refused to go to Olds' help.

Dube reported that all the infrastructure on Compensation Farm, which was a thriving safari and wild animal conservation operation, is burned out and abandoned. All the animals, including a herd of rare sable antelope and Olds' herd of 1,000 pedigree cattle, have been killed for the pot. Peasant subsistence farmers settled by the government on the land in mud and wattle huts have been unable to produce crops because the government has failed to provide them with irrigation equipment, in a notoriously dry area, or other inputs necessary for minimal agricultural production.

Mukaro's and Dube's discoveries on Arizona and Compensation Farms only mirror what is clear to the naked eye in a country that until the beginning of this century was dubbed the breadbasket of Africa. For hundreds of kilometres, on once prime farms there are no workers in the fields, no stands of ripening maize, no smoke coming from the flues of tobacco barns, and no cattle or sheep getting fat on the grass that still grows tall. Indeed, little sign of life or production at all.

The United Nations recently launched a 215 million US dollar appeal for food aid for Zimbabwe amid grim projections that this season's grain yields - in a country that once exported to its neighbours - will only represent half the nation's annual requirements.

With severe drought exacerbating the crisis, Lovemore Moyo, deputy chairman of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said, “People in the rural areas are on the brink of starvation. The strongest may survive this - the others won’t, as long as ZANU PF [Mugabe's ruling party] uses food as an electioneering tool.”

Mugabe and ZANU PF have been widely accused of withholding international food aid from people who do not possess ZANU PF membership cards.

The initial land invaders, mostly war veterans, were themselves pushed from the farms so that they could be redistributed to top ZANU PF party officials, senior army, air force and police officers and compliant judges and journalists. Few of the powerful and privileged “new farmers” are producing crops while the rest lack the skills to produce even on a subsistence level, deputy agriculture minister Sylvester Nguni recently admitted.

Visiting Stevens' Arizona Farm, once recommended by the Commercial Farmers Union as a model to be replicated throughout the country, Mukaro said he found the main working compound burned to the ground and deserted. "Everything looks run down and deserted," said the reporter.

"The dereliction makes any right-minded person question whether the people who abducted and murdered Stevens in 2000 were driven by hunger for land or simply inspired by greed and racial hatred. Over and above all, did they really desire land for farming?

"People in the area know who killed Stevens, but the police have never questioned the man."

Mukaro said the wasteland that today marks Arizona and all surrounding farms illustrates how the new farmers were "dumped on farmland without the necessary equipment, knowledge or financial backing to prepare them to take over from the fleeing whites.

"The farmers are failing to utilise the land in the same manner as the previous owners. Most said they had no resources such as draught power or fertiliser."

Mukaro met the only current occupant of Arizona Farm, Marian Shangwe, who has taken occupancy of the farmhouse - all windows broken and paint peeling off after seven years of neglect - to sell beer to teachers from Nhowe Mission. "All teachers come to drink from here," said Shangwe. "Nhowe as an institution owned by the [United States-headquartered] Church of Christ does not allow the sale of beer from their premises, so teachers have nowhere else to go."

To date, no one has been arrested or prosecuted for the murder of Olds. The same applies to his 72-year-old mother, Gloria, whose body, riddled with bullets, was discovered on the neighbouring Silver Springs Farm two years after her son's murder.

On Compensation Farm, devoid of wild animals, cattle and crops, Dube spoke to Thulani Mupande, a middle-aged man who was moved on to the farm with his family shortly after Olds was killed.

Mupande said life was difficult because the government had not fulfilled its promises to drill boreholes to support crops. Mupande said most of the "new settlers" had quit the farm, taking with them engines installed by Olds to pump water for his cattle.

"We are all praying that it rains, but the skies are not opening up," said Mupande. "We are all going to starve again this year if it does not rain. Most people left a long time ago because there is no hospital or clinic around and the only school is twenty kilometres away."

Chris Jarrett, former chairman of the local farmers association, told Dube that most of the people who were moved on to Compensation Farm left after all the wild animals and beef cattle had been killed. "Olds had a thriving safari business," said Jarrett. "There were thousands of sable and impala on the farm but all were hunted by the war veterans when they moved into Compensation. Now there is absolutely nothing.

"The situation is sad. Commercial farmers in Nyamandlovu [the district in which the Olds farm is located] were supplying the whole country with butternuts, tomatoes, beetroot, maize, tobacco, paprika, onions and cabbages. But now all you get from these farmers is a few buckets of maize."

On the other side of the country, Mukaro quoted an agricultural expert as saying, "Nationally, agricultural output has predictably declined, relegating government efforts to a national joke.

"The major constraint to increased productivity is the uncertainty of tenure where farmers are evicted on a daily basis. Continued acquisition notices [confiscating farms by decree], disruptions, acts of violence on farms and lack of land-based collateral are some of the problems farmers face."

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Nine opposition activists who were to be arraigned Saturday on charges of attempted murder and illegal weapons possession all required medical attention for injuries sustained since their arrests, doctors said.

One of the activists collapsed in the courthouse and the judge agreed to lawyers' appeals to adjourn the hearing and allow them to get medical treatment, opposition officials told reporters at the Harare magistrates' court.

Doctors and staff at private medical facilities where the detainees were taken under police guard said the nine -- who were detained on Tuesday and Wednesday -- appeared to have been assaulted while in custody. The medical staff asked not to be identified, saying they feared reprisals.

The government blames the activists for a wave of unrest and firebombings, allegations they have repeatedly denied. Lawyers say the activists could face additional terrorism-related charges that carry sentences of life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Attorneys for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change were seeking a court ruling ordering the activists' immediate release. The hearing Saturday was adjourned before they could be arraigned.

President Robert Mugabe has been criticized for a clampdown on opposition activists and other rights violations and critics say his government is corrupt and responsible for an economic meltdown in the country. Official inflation, fueled by corruption and black market dealing, is 1,700 percent, the highest in the world. There is mass unemployment, shortages of most basic products and an increasing reliance on food aid in what used to be the region's breadbasket.

The activists' detentions were part of a political crisis that provoked concerns of a spillover in the rest of the region, and African leaders at an emergency meeting in Tanzania on Thursday appointed South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate.

Mbeki has been criticized at home and abroad for his insistence on a quiet diplomacy that has had no effect. Previous attempts by South Africa to bring Mugabe and the opposition to the negotiating table have been short-lived.

''We are always optimistic,'' Mbeki said in an interview broadcast Saturday on South African Broadcasting Corp. radio. ''So the best we can do is to encourage them to engage one another ... and hopefully they will find one another and produce a solution that the country needs.''

Zimbabwe's ruling party endorsed Mugabe on Friday as its candidate in next year's presidential elections. Mugabe, 83, has been Zimbabwe's only leader since independence from Britain in 1980; next year's poll would allow him to say in power until 2013, when he is nearly 90.

Main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said his party will boycott next year's poll unless democratic reforms made it free and fair.

Tsvangirai and several of his colleagues are recuperating from injuries suffered when police crushed a prayer meeting in Harare on March 11 that the government said was a banned demonstration.

Mugabe acknowledged that police used violence against the opposition and killed at least one activist. He warned perpetrators of unrest they would be ''bashed'' again if violence continued.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's main labor union said on Sunday it expected thousands of workers to ``stay away'' from work for two days this week to push for higher wages in a strike that could pile more pressure on President Robert Mugabe.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) says a majority of its affiliate unions have signed up for a job boycott on Tuesday and Wednesday, chosen instead of a demonstration amid fears of possible violent reprisals.

Mugabe, battling a crumbling economy and resurgent opposition, has accused the ZCTU of being a Western stooge, sponsored to oust him for seizing white-owned commercial farms. His ministers have called on workers to ignore the boycott, warning the unions ``against inciting violence.''

ZCTU President Lovemore Matombo told Reuters the party was going ahead with ``the stay away'' because talks between labor, industry and government officials on a higher minimum wage and other improved work conditions had not yet yielded results.

``As far as we are concerned we gave adequate notice for this job boycott, and we are trying to protect workers from brutality by not staging any demonstrations,'' Matombo said.

The ZCTU say workers want a minimum wage of 1 million Zimbabwe dollars ($4,000 on the official market but worth $50 on the black market) and for the government to resolve an economic meltdown and increase access to anti-retroviral drugs.

Mugabe has faced international condemnation over a crackdown, which left main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai injured and hospitalized after police stopped a banned prayer rally to protest against a deepening economic crisis.

The unions are aligned to Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Labour Minister Nicholas Goche accused the ZCTU of ``playing politics'' by calling for the boycott.

``The government has learned that it is individuals in the ZCTU who are aligned to the opposition politics ... who want to be seen to be participating in the current Western-backed violence aimed at regime change in Zimbabwe,'' he said.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena told state media that police would be deployed in all major towns during the strike.

Political analysts say Mugabe's crackdown on the MDC and the fight against the deteriorating economy by the unions are likely to keep the pressure on the Zimbabwean government.

The MDC said a Harare court had on Saturday ordered treatment for nine members, including a legislator, who had been taken to court after suffering assaults in police custody.

``Almost all of them were unable to walk, and two were whisked to hospital by ambulance while on life-support systems,'' a senior MDC official said on Sunday.

Zimbabwe's ruling party on Friday adopted a motion to hold elections in 2008 and endorsed Mugabe as its presidential candidate for a new five-year term.

LONDON (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki said he believed Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe will step down peacefully and that the chief challenge for the region was to ensure Zimbabwe has free and fair elections next year.

Mbeki told Tuesday's Financial Times he had started mediation following his appointment last week by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to spearhead efforts to resolve Zimbabwe's crisis.

Asked if the 83-year-old Mugabe -- accused of electoral abuses and economic mismanagement by the opposition -- would eventually stand down, Mbeki said he believed he would.

``I think so. Yes, sure,'' Mbeki said. ``You see, President Mugabe and the leadership of (the ruling) ZANU-PF believe they are running a democratic country.''

``That's why you have an elected opposition, that's why it's possible for the opposition to run municipal government (in Harare and Bulawayo),'' he said in an interview.

The SADC appointed Mbeki to act as mediator between Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) when it held a summit in Tanzania last week after the Zimbabwe government's violent March 11 crackdown on political opponents.

The South African leader dismissed suggestions that Zimbabwe's neighbors could force change in the country. ``We don't have a big stick,'' he said, adding a joint approach by African leaders could pave the way to a settlement.

Mbeki said his office had already been in contact with both of the MDC's main factions and ZANU-PF to draw up a negotiating framework for next year's elections, in which Mugabe has already been endorsed as the ZANU-PF candidate.

Mbeki said the future talks would likely focus on MDC demands for legal and electoral reforms, including the strict media and security laws which critics say Mugabe has used to entrench his power in the country.

``I am quite clear from previous interactions with the MDC we have had they will raise questions ... like legislation affecting the media, legislation about holding of public meetings,'' Mbeki said in the online transcript of his interview.

``We will then engage ZANU-PF saying it is necessary to respond to all of these. We may very well come to a stage later when they will have to sit together to agree ... (on) what they will do to create a climate conducive to free and fair elections.''

The MDC's principal leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, said in Johannesburg he would be willing to commit to any election that could be guaranteed free and fair, but said it would require quick action from Mbeki to create the appropriate conditions.

The SADC, criticized in the West for turning a blind eye to Mugabe's crackdown, hopes its appointment of Mbeki will lead to direct talks between Mugabe and the MDC although previous attempts to broker political agreement have ended in failure.

The West accuses Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, of authoritarian rule and economic mismanagement. Mugabe says he is being punished for seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- In an Easter message pinned to church bulletin boards around the country, Zimbabwe's Roman Catholic bishops called on President Robert Mugabe to leave office or face ''open revolt'' from those suffering under his government.

The letter, titled ''God Hears the Cries of the Oppressed,'' was the most critical pastoral message since Zimbabwe won independence from Britain in 1980 and Mugabe assumed leadership of the country for the first time.

Once prosperous, the country is reeling under hyperinflation of more than 1,700 percent, 80 percent unemployment, shortages of food and other basic goods and one of the world's lowest life expectancies.

''As the suffering population becomes more insistent, generating more and more pressure through boycotts, strikes, demonstrations and uprisings, the state responds with ever harsher oppression through arrests, detentions, banning orders, beatings and torture,'' the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference said in a pastoral message pinned up at churches throughout the country.

The majority of Zimbabwe's Christians -- including Mugabe -- are Roman Catholics. Several thousand worshippers who packed the cathedral in Harare clustered around the bulletin boards to read the message after morning Mass on Sunday.

''Many people in Zimbabwe are angry, and their anger is now erupting into open revolt in one township after another,'' the nine bishops wrote.

''In order to avoid further bloodshed and avert a mass uprising, the nation needs a new people-driven constitution that will guide a democratic leadership chosen in free and fair elections,'' it said.

A similar letter in the nearby nation of Malawi pressured longtime dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda into holding a referendum on reform in 1992 and calling democratic elections, which he lost, ending 30 years of brutal rule.

''We cannot yet say what the response of our congregations will be, but basic biblical teachings apply. Oppression is not negotiable. It must stop before there can be any dialogue,'' said the Rev. Oskar Wermter of the Catholic communications secretariat in Harare.

Wermter said the bishops wanted the contents of the letter to receive the widest possible distribution. The letter was delivered in the traditional rural strongholds of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party across the country, where priests showed what he called a very strong interest in it.

In his traditional ''Urbi et Orbi'' Easter address from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI singled out Zimbabwe among other troubled countries.

''Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis and for this reason the bishops of that country in a recent document indicated prayer and a shared commitment for the common good as the only way forward,'' the pope said in his Easter message which he read to tens of thousands of faithful in St. Peter's Square,

The bishops called for a day of prayer and fasting April 14 and said there would be a prayer service for Zimbabwe every week after that.

The Anglican church has been more muted, with its leaders generally toeing the ruling party line.

Police violently broke up a multi-denominational prayer meeting March 11, describing it as a banned demonstration. Two pro-democracy activists died and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, and a dozen senior colleagues were hospitalized after beatings.

Mugabe subsequently headed off a challenge to his leadership to win party support to stand for another presidential term in national elections in 2008. There was no response from the government Sunday to the pastoral letter and Mugabe was out of the country.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has deregistered all non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and told them to submit new applications to try to weed out groups it says are trying to oust President Robert Mugabe, state radio said on Tuesday.

Mugabe, sole ruler since independence in 1980, has accused NGOs and aid groups of supporting the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and imposed tight restrictions on food aid distribution in the country.

Minister of Information and Publicity Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said Harare was targeting NGOs because some were using relief activities as a cover for a MDC-led campaign to overthrow the government, state radio reported.

``Pro-opposition and Western organizations masquerading as relief agencies continue to mushroom, and the government has annulled the registration of all NGOs in order to screen out agents of imperialism from organizations working to uplift the wellbeing of the poor,'' Ndlovu was quoted as saying.

Government officials were not immediately available for comment.

But aid groups in the country, which is struggling with a deepening economic crisis marked by soaring inflation, poverty and chronic food and fuel shortages, expressed concern.

They said the government's move could stop food aid from reaching Zimbabwe, which has signaled it expects a huge shortfall of maize this year due to drought. Maize is the nation's key staple.

There are also concerns that programs that combat the southern African nation's HIV/AIDS epidemic, considered one of the worst on the continent, could be impeded by the government's deregistration campaign.

``We cannot underestimate the role played by NGOs and if that (deregistration) is true we are really concerned,'' Bob Muchabayiwa, program director at the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), told Reuters.

``We are trying to engage the government to hear whether this is a policy position because this could cause panic in the sector,'' Muchabayiwa said, adding that NANGO had more than 1,000 members.

The targeting of the NGOs came just days after Zimbabwe's government cancelled an agreement with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide help to reform parliament.

Its cancellation followed a U.S. government claim that it was working with some parliamentary committees to discredit Mugabe's government. The admission, just weeks after a violent police crackdown on anti-Mugabe activists, infuriated Harare.

Mugabe, widely accused of running Zimbabwe's once-prosperous economy into the ground through policies such as the seizure of white-owned farms, blames the economic problems on sabotage by Western powers who are keen to topple him.

Britain, the United States and other Western nations deny that they have waged economic war against Mugabe and insist that they are merely trying to restore democracy in Zimbabwe.

The ZANU-PF administration presses ahead with a plan to take a controlling share in foreign-owned businesses, despite warnings about the consequences.

By Mike Nyoni in Harare

The Zimbabwean authorities are pressing ahead with a nationalisation scheme despite warnings from the country’s central banker that the economic effects will be ruinous.

The dispute highlights the schism between politicians who place ideological policies above pragmatism, and the technocrats in the administration.

On September 26, the lower house of parliament passed the Indigenisation and Empowerment Bill, which will compel foreign-owned firms, including mining companies and banks, to cede 51 per cent of their shares to black Zimbabweans. After the upper chamber, the Senate, passed the law on October 2, only President Robert Mugabe’s assent is required for it to enter into force.

Defending the bill in the lower chamber, Indigenisation Minister Paul Mangwana likened the planned takeover of foreign banks, mining and manufacturing firms to the government’s seizure of commercial farms which started in 2000 – a move which critics say has been counterproductive, destroying farming and ultimately the wider economy.

Mangwana said the new bill represented a “political decision” taken to correct the injustices of the colonial past.

“They want to create white islands in a liberated Zimbabwe, but we will not take that,” he said. “The 51 per cent is only the minimum – we want 90 per cent. When you are carrying out a revolution, you do not do it in half steps. Zimbabwe cannot be half independent.”

The minister scoffed at warnings that partial nationalisation would prompt foreign investors to pull out of Zimbabwe.

“If Standard Chartered Bank feel they cannot continue their operations in Zimbabwe, they can simply go,” he said, indicating that local banks would step in and fill the gap.

A day before the Senate vote, President Mugabe made it clear he agreed with this view when he addressed ZANU-PF members at Harare airport on October 1 after returning from the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

"The minerals are ours. We are offering partners, good partners, friendly partners, a share, 49 per cent or thereabouts. If they won't take it, hard luck – we will give it to our people," he said, according to the DPA news agency.

The same day, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono, adopted a very different line on the issue. In a statement on monetary policy, he called for a “fine balancing act between indigenisation of the economy and investment attraction”.

“Of particular concern to us as monetary authorities would be any attempts to forcibly push the envelope of indigenisation into the delicate area of banking and finance,” he said.

Imprudent statements by politicians worsened Zimbabwe’s country’s sovereign risk factor and undermined property rights, and this would act as a deterrent to badly-needed foreign investment, he said.

Gono warned that hasty decisions would have “unintended consequences”, just as he did in July, when the government to slash prices of goods and services in a bid to curb inflation. The result of that policy move was that basic goods disappeared from the shops in a rush of panic-buying.

Instead, the central bank chief recommended that the indigenisation process should be managed in such a way as to ensure local people were able to pay for shares. Thus, if a company had assets valued at 500 million US dollars, it would take about 15 years for locals to acquire a 51 per cent stake.

Gono alleged that the present nationalisation initiative was being backed by “well-connected cliques” who wanted to use it to “amass wealth for themselves in a starkly greedy but irresponsible manner”.

In a pointed rebuke to Mangwana, Gono challenged those who wanted to muscle into the banking and financial sector to apply for operating licences from the central bank.

Mugabe had a five hour meeting with Gono on September 3, which according to the Zimbabwe Independent, resulted in a “temporary truce”.

However, an economic analyst in Harare said it was unlikely the central banker and his political masters would be able to agree on the fundamental issues.

“Their imperatives are divergent,” said the economist, who did not want to be named. “Mugabe sincerely believes we need price controls to cushion the most vulnerable members of society. He also wants to take over companies he believes are working in league with the opposition against his government.”

The analyst said more of the same kind of populist rhetoric could be expected from the political leadership as the March 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections drew closer.

“People like Mangwana are more likely to align themselves with the president before they are reined in by prudent advice from Gono, who better understands the implications of such reckless utterances on investor confidence,” he said.

“When Gono said in his monetary statement that he was merely offering advice… he knew what he was up against. There will be more wanton spending and even more economically damaging statements until the elections in March. Any meeting of minds on policy issues can only be coincidental, although one would expect government to appreciate the importance of getting into an election riding on a healthy economy.”

Zimbabwe is in its eighth year of recession, with annual inflation put at 6,600 per cent, unemployment at 80 per cent, and widespread shortages of fuel and basic foodstuffs.

Mike Nyoni is the pseudonym of a journalist in Zimbabwe.

In tour of Harare suburbs, parliamtarians shocked to see raw sewage flowing in front of locals’ houses.

By Mike Nyoni in Harare

Zimbabwe’s state-owned Herald newspaper this week ran a huge colour picture on its front page with the caption, “Legislators and senators looking at flowing raw sewage during a joint tour of the parliamentary portfolio committees of local government and health and child welfare in Budirirro, Harare….”

Next to the picture was a report that the water utility, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority, ZINWA, had sharply increased water penalties for domestic consumers who use more than 20 cubic metres a month, with the additional revenue to be used for development and maintenance of existing infrastructure.

The painful irony for most Zimbabweans is that water is never available on demand. In the capital, Harare, posh northern suburbs can go for three days without water. This month they went for two weeks without electricity as well.

Despite the dire water and sewage problems, widespread shortages of fuel and basic food stuffs and skyrocketing inflation at around 8,000 per cent, the ruling party is focusing on the forthcoming special congress to select a candidate - or simply endorse President Robert Mugabe, many believe - to represent ZANU-PF in the presidential election scheduled for March next year.

In the second city of Bulawayo, 450 kilometres west of Harare, the local authority has imposed stringent water rationing measures in poor townships, allowing residents supplies for a few hours every three days. Those fortunate enough to have boreholes sell water to people desperate for the precious commodity.

Back in Harare, Deputy Minister for Water Resources and Infrastructural Development Walter Mzembi warned of the health hazards posed by the lack of constant supplies in poor residential areas and council clinics. During a tour of Highfield, Glen View, Budiriro and Chitungwiza southwest of Harare, members of parliament reported a sharp rise in cases of water-related ailments such as diarrhoea.

Residents complained of high water bills despite going for days on end with no water in their taps; and of sewage flowing in front of their houses, posing a threat to the health of their families.

Mzembi attributed water shortages partly to the failure by the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, ZESA, to provide power. “As you know, no power means no pumping [of water] so we are holding meetings with the ministry [responsible for power distribution] to spare areas with water pumps [from power cuts],” Mzembi told Chitungwiza residents during the October 23 tour by parliamentarians.

He said the government was setting up a framework which would put residents “at the centre of water management systems” in the country so that they could appreciate the problems ZINWA was facing.

Unfortunately, that is not what the residents and ratepayers in the country’s major cities where water distribution and the sewage system have been taken over by ZINWA want. They say this has pushed them out of the equation.

Previously, residents and ratepayers elected representatives to local government in the form of ward councilors. In this way, they were able to periodically express their support or disapproval through biennial elections. But government has removed these institutions and replaced them with a state company which is seen to represent the interests of government, not those of ratepayers. ZINWA has neither their support nor their sympathy, so they are not interested in its problems.

In his latest monetary statement on October 1, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono allocated a staggering 14 trillion Zimbabwe dollars (approximately 14 million US dollars) to ZINWA to refurbish major waterworks across the country and improve the sewage system. So far there has been no noticeable change, as the touring MPs discovered on their tour.

The front page picture in the Herald didn’t tell the full story, or the horror that the parliamentarians felt when they came face-to-face for the first time with what for most poor residents has become a “normal” life. None of the daily reports in the official media had prepared them for the degree of squalor they saw.

Anthony Mapurisa in Highfield told the MPs he had been living with the stench of the raw sewage flowing close to his house for a whole month. Another said he had been doing so for the past three months. As the residents spoke, the smell of the sewage flowing in front of the shocked MPs was so overpowering that one reportedly vomited.

Mike Nyoni is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

The government’s statistics office said the inflation rate surged to a new record of 100,580 percent in January, up from 66,212 percent in December. Rangarirai Mberi, news editor of the independent Financial Gazette in Harare, said the state of the economy would feature prominently in next month’s presidential and parliamentary elections. “Numbers no longer shock people,” he said. Zimbabweans have learned to live in a hyperinflationary environment, he added, “but the question is, how long can this continue?”

Extravagant birthday celebrations seen as emblematic of lack of care for the nation.

By Mike Nyoni in Harare

The greatest irony of President Robert Mugabe’s birthday bash last week was that few of the thousands of youths he regaled will reach his ripe old age of 84.

Under Mugabe’s rule, life expectancy in Zimbabwe has declined from about 65 years at independence from Britain in 1980 to the current 36 years for men and 34 years for women. The AIDS scourge has only added to the humanitarian crisis in the country, which began eight years ago with Mugabe’s decision to expropriate white-owned commercial farms, ostensibly to give to landless veterans of the independence war.

Observers say most of the productive farms went to Mugabe’s cronies and members of the military and police who have no idea about farming.

The economic collapse meant that a majority of the youths cheering Mugabe at his birthday extravaganza had no job and would be returning to rural or urban poverty as soon as the festivities were over.

Few of them have any illusions that they might reach half Mugabe’s age. "We have heard it said that life begins at 40 but that statement rings empty to me," said a youth from the ruling ZANU-PF party who said he was going to the birthday celebration in Beitbridge, on the South African border, for the food.

"Poverty, AIDS and stress are taking their toll. Most of us have no future to look forward to. We have no jobs, we have no education to talk about and that is very stressful."

Ironically, when Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980, it was regarded as the “jewel of Africa”. It was also considered the breadbasket of the region, exporting the staple maize to neighbouring countries in years of deficit.

It has become a net importer since the destruction of agriculture, considered the backbone of the economy. “To me the real irony is that Mugabe wants to teach our children that he is a role model leader, when he has deprived them of a secure future through his criminal policies,” said Anna Gonzo, a housewife in Harare.

“He is a very bad example of what a father should be like, let alone a national leader. He doesn’t have the authority to stand before our children telling them about principles and morality when he has literally ruined their lives.”

She said while Mugabe was happy to boast about the seven degrees he acquired under the repressive colonial regime of Ian Smith, few young people can afford a university education now because of astronomical costs and a lack of facilities.

Zimbabwe has been in the grip of a political and economic crisis for the past eight years, estimated by economists to have cut gross domestic product to 1953 levels.

The unemployment rate has spiraled to 85 per cent while half the population is estimated to subsist below the poverty line.

“Shameless as he is, Mugabe is happy to tell the youth that all their problems are the result of western sanctions, not his own economic and political failures,” said Gonzo. “Fortunately few people still buy into this propaganda anymore.”

Mugabe is almost the oldest active politician in the country, second only to his vice-president, Joseph Msika, who is older by three months.

The similarities end there, however. Msika has on several occasions opposed Mugabe’s haphazard seizure of white-owned commercial farms and has been critical of Mugabe’s endorsement as the ruling party’s presidential candidate for next month’s election.

The two nationalist leaders have been together since the 1987 Unity Accord between ZANU-PF and the defunct ZAPU-PF, which was led by the late Joshua Nkomo.

Mugabe’s birthday celebrations were characterised by extravagant feasting at a time when nearly four million people are facing starvation or survive on donor assistance.

Analysts say it is emblematic of Mugabe’s lack of care for the nation that he should entertain his cronies and ministers in the midst of grinding poverty. “Can you imagine how many people could have been fed from the [funds] ZANU-PF raised for this personal junket?” said one analyst in the capital Harare.

“But it would be expecting too much to think that ZANU-PF would scrimp on food just because a few people were starving next door.”

Mike Nyoni is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Phone service already was iffy because of Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, but landline and mobile circuits have been virtually paralyzed as voters try to call each other seeking information about Saturday's election.

''This has been the cell phone and text message election,'' Ephraim Choto, a Harare accountant, said Wednesday as people angrily complained about the trickle of official results.

Repeated attempts to get phone calls through were cut off with beeps, ''network busy'' signals or just dead silence.

''It's frustrating not to be able to communicate and you just throw up your hands in despair,'' Choto said.

He said relatives across the country who saw results posted outside local polling stations had called or sent text messages to compare notes.

The biggest opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said it had thousands of poll agents and supporters texting in results. Party members also were equipped with camera phones or digital cameras to photograph results displayed at voting stations.

In downtown Harare, people crowded around parked cars with radios turned on so they could monitor the latest official results announced on state radio.

''I can't see why it's taking so long. Last time we had all the results in a day or two. It stinks,'' said one women, who gave her name only as Ziyambi.

Some in the crowd around one car speculated that the delay was a ploy to portray a close race between the opposition and President Robert Mugabe's longtime ruling party.

''It's been crazy. My phone hasn't stopped with friends calling in from all over the country,'' businessman Thomas Bute said as he walked past a car with radio blaring.

Well-to-do Zimbabweans with computers relied on specialized Web sites for tallies compiled by independent monitors and the main opposition party.

Only about 30,000 Zimbabweans own satellite television dishes. One Harare family asked a relative in Britain to listen to world broadcasts about Zimbabwe and text them results reported by international media.

''My uncle got through from London yesterday and held his phone to the radio news there for us to listen to,'' said Peter Jampies, a car mechanic.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- President Robert Mugabe's long-ruling party lost its parliamentary majority Wednesday, bolstering opposition claims that impoverished Zimbabweans voted for change in this struggling southern African nation.

The opposition also claimed victory for leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Saturday's presidential vote, but the state-controlled newspaper predicted a runoff -- the first official admission that Mugabe, the nation's autocratic leader of 28 years, had not won re-election.

The Movement for Democratic Change expressed confidence Tsvangirai could win a runoff with an even larger margin, but there were fears an embattled Mugabe would roll out every weapon in his considerable political and government arsenal to stay in power.

Election observer Imani Countess of the Washington-based TransAfrica Forum told The Associated Press that the most frightening conversation she has had in Zimbabwe was with a senior official of the ruling ZANU-PF party discussing a runoff.

''He was very calm and jovial but made it very, very clear that if there was a runoff, that ZANU would use all the state organs at its disposal to ensure victory, and that is very, very worrisome,'' she said.

Countess, whose group promotes Africa's interests in the United States, said the powerful elite that has benefited from Mugabe's patronage since independence from Britain had a vested interest in ensuring he wins.

The 84-year-old Mugabe, who hasn't commented on the voting, has been accused of stealing previous elections that Western observers said were marred by violence, fraud and intimidation.

This election was different because local results were posted outside polling stations for the first time. That let independent monitors and party representatives make tallies independent of the official electoral commission, which reported no figures in the presidential race while slowly releasing results in parliamentary contests, including losses by eight Cabinet ministers.

The Electoral Commission announced final results for parliamentary elections after midnight, giving the opposition 109 seats to 97 for Mugabe's party, plus one seat to an independent in the 210-seat parliament. Three seats must be decided in by-elections since candidates died or withdrew. Eight Cabinet ministers have lost their seats, according to official results.

Tendai Biti, secretary-general of the opposition MDC, said the party's compilation of local returns gave Tsvangirai 50.3 percent of the votes in the presidential contest, against 43.8 percent for Mugabe. Simba Makoni, a former ruling party stalwart whose defection brought an internal rift over Mugabe's leadership into the open, got about 8 percent.

''We maintain that we have won the presidential election outright without the need for a runoff,'' Biti said at a news conference. But he added the opposition would take part in any runoff ordered -- and expected to do even better in a two-way race.

But the figures Biti gave at the news conference did not back up his contention that Tsvangirai won. Biti said 2,382,243 votes were cast, and Tsvangirai got 1,171,079, which is 49 percent. Contacted soon after the news conference, Biti could not explain the discrepancy.

The constitution provides for a runoff within three weeks of the election if no candidate wins more than 50 percent plus one vote.

The Herald newspaper, which reflects government and ZANU-PF thinking, said Wednesday that ''the pattern of results in the presidential election shows that none of the candidates will garner more than 50 percent of the vote, forcing a rerun.''

It did not say where its information came from. The electoral commission has issued only parliamentary results, and stretched those out over four days in an apparent attempt to buy the ruling party time to work out its next move.

''The delay in announcing the outcome must be seen as a deliberate and calculated tactic,'' British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told lawmakers in London on Wednesday.

He praised Tsvangirai's behavior as ''statesmanlike,'' but stopped short of backing opposition claims of victory.

Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga called the opposition's claim ''irresponsible'' and ''mischievous.''

''They have got to be very careful,'' Matonga told British Broadcasting Corp. ''They think they can provoke ZANU-PF, and the police and the army.''

The government warned previously that premature victory announcements by the opposition would be tantamount to a coup attempt.

Tensions have been rising as people stay away from work to await results.

Paramilitary police stepped up patrols in Harare and Bulawayo, the second-largest city, and checked vehicles at roadblocks leading to the capital. Police ordered beer halls and stores selling liquor to shut early Tuesday night. The opposition has most of its support in urban centers.

Independent monitors and governments, including the United States, have indicated they believe the opposition won the election, though no figures reflect the landslide victory claimed by the opposition the day after voting.

''But it is, effectively, a landslide if you consider the many obstacles put in the way of the opposition,'' said Chris Maroleng, a senior researcher at South Africa's Institute for Strategic Studies.

State media campaigned for Mugabe and his loyalists while vilifying the opposition. Opposition leaders charged that they were denied copies of voter rolls allegedly inflated with dead and fictitious people, that new districts were drawn up to favor Mugabe's rural power base, and that police were posted inside polling stations to intimidate people.

Countess, the election monitor with TransAfrica, said she had been told that behind-the-scenes negotiations between Mugabe's and Tsvangirai's parties on providing a graceful exit for the president had failed.

The government and opposition denied there were such talks, but Countess said there had been ''quiet conversations going on'' according to ZANU-PF officials and religious leaders receiving information from highly placed people in both camps.

''My understanding is that Morgan Tsvangirai refused the idea of a government of national unity, because they believe they have won,'' she said.

In South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate, called for Mugabe to accept defeat.

''We hope the transition will be a peaceful one, relatively peaceful, and that Mr. Mugabe will step down with dignity, gracefully,'' Tutu said.

Tutu said Mugabe should have given up power years ago.

''He did a fantastic job, and it's such a great shame, because he had a wonderful legacy. If he had stepped down 10 or so years ago he would be held in very, very high regard,'' Tutu said.

Zimbabwe's strong economy, and support for Mugabe, began unraveling in 2000 after he ordered the seizure of white-owned commercial farms to turn over to blacks. The farms went mainly to Mugabe's friends, relatives and cronies who have not used the land profitably, if at all.

The country was once a major supplier of food to the region, but a third of Zimbabweans now depend on international food aid and 80 percent are jobless. The country suffers shortages of food, medicine, water, power and fuel.

By MICHAEL WINES

Zimbabwe’s government staged separate police raids on Thursday against the main opposition party, foreign journalists and at least one democracy advocate, raising the specter of a broad crackdown aimed at keeping the country’s imperiled leaders in power.

With the government facing election results that threaten its 28-year reign, security officers raided the Miekles Hotel in central Harare on Thursday afternoon, searching rooms that the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, had rented for election operations, said Tendai Biti, the party’s general secretary.

About the same time, a second group of riot officers sealed off the York Lodge, a small hotel in suburban Harare that is frequented by foreign journalists. A lodge worker who refused to be identified for safety reasons said six people were detained, including Barry Bearak, a correspondent for The New York Times who was later located in a Harare jail. The identities of the others were not clear.

Leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change said the raids heralded a campaign of political repression to safeguard President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders. His party, known as ZANU-PF, has already lost control of the lower house of Parliament, according to official results from Saturday’s elections, a huge turnabout in a nation where Mr. Mugabe has long controlled virtually all levers of power.

But the government had still not released the outcome of the presidential race, prompting international criticism of the delay and concern that attempts were under way to manipulate the election results. The government has said the vote count has been slow because the election was the first simultaneous one for all national offices.

The opposition says that tallies posted at each polling place show that its presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won 50.3 percent of the vote, barely enough to gain the majority needed to avert a runoff election against Mr. Mugabe.

But the outcome is far less certain. One independent projection of polling data estimated that Mr. Tsvangirai was well in the lead, but that a runoff would still be necessary. Before the election, Mr. Mugabe repeatedly said that he would not allow the opposition to take power, and since then his aides have said that Mr. Mugabe “is going to fight to the last.”

“He’s not giving up; he’s not going anywhere,” Bright Matonga, the government’s deputy information minister, told the British Broadcasting Corporation. “He hasn’t lost the election.”

Zimbabwe has been tense, and police officers have been deployed in force since before the election. But except for the raids and detentions, it was generally quiet in Harare, the capital, and Bulawayo, the country’s second largest city, according to observers there. Still, Mr. Tsvangirai canceled a news conference on Thursday.

A witness described an intimidating display of force outside the York Lodge, the hotel where Mr. Bearak and others were detained. Around 5 p.m., two pickup trucks with 10 to 15 armed riot police officers stationed themselves outside the hotel.

Soon after, reinforcements came, blocking off the hotel and searching it room by room, confiscating laptop computers, notebooks and cellphones. The raid was overseen by high-ranking police officials, said another witness who refused to be named.

“I can confirm that we have arrested two reporters at York Lodge for practicing without accreditation,” a police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, told The New Zealand Times.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, said that Mr. Bearak “was apparently one of a number of Americans and other foreign nationals rounded up today. An American consular official who visited him at the central police station reported that he was being held for ‘violation of the journalism laws.’ We are making every effort to assure that he is well treated, and to secure his prompt release.”

Separately, police officers in Harare also detained an unidentified American worker for a pro-democracy group, according to Mr. Biti, the general secretary of the Movement for Democratic Change. That worker’s whereabouts were unclear.

Mr. Biti described the raids as an attempt by Mr. Mugabe to overturn an election that the opposition says it won. “What he’s essentially doing is a coup d’état,” Mr. Biti said. “He’s lost the election, so he’s carrying out a coup.”

Mr. Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe for all but a few months of its history, is widely judged a hero of the nation’s struggle against white rule. He has become deeply unpopular, though, as the economy has imploded and dissent has been stifled.

In recent years, all but a handful of weekly newspapers have come under government control, and virtually all meetings require government approval. The annual inflation rate exceeds 100,000 percent, and the currency is essentially worthless. Mr. Mugabe blames a Western plot to overthrow him and re-establish colonial rule for the nation’s ills.

Zimbabwe prohibits foreign journalists from reporting there without government approval, which is rarely granted. In recent years, Western journalists lacking accreditation have routinely entered the nation openly, although quietly, to chronicle political and economic problems there.

“It is imperative that all journalists, foreign and domestic, be allowed to freely cover the important political situation unfolding in Zimbabwe,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, adding that the authorities there should “stop intimidating all journalists.”

On Thursday Mr. Tsvangirai had intended to mollify security chiefs who had previously sworn not to follow anyone but Mr. Mugabe, The Associated Press reported Thursday. But a meeting with seven generals was called off because the officers said they would be under surveillance, according to the report.

A deal that Mr. Tsvangirai proposed to the generals promised generous retirement packages, as well as pledges not to take back some of the farms that had been doled out to officers under Mr. Mugabe’s land seizures of years past, The A.P. said.

The report appeared to correspond with earlier accounts from political analysts that the opposition was in discussions with government officials about the possibility of a transfer of power.

Zimbabwe's opposition party is appealing to the United Nations to intervene before "there is blood in the street."

Spokesman Nelson Chamisa asked the U.N. on Saturday to help the country prepare for a presidential runoff, saying he fears the "vampire instincts" of President Robert Mugabe and his ruling party.

Chamisa said Zimbabweans "need the international community to help us." He added that the U.N. should not wait to "come when there is blood in the street, blood in the villages."

While official results from the March 29 presidential election have not been released, independent observers projected the opposition had won most of the votes but not enough to avoid a runoff.

Zimbabwe opposition supporters face the prospect of a heavy crackdown by security forces Tuesday if they heed a call to launch a general strike to show their disgust at long-delayed election results.

Police have been deployed throughout the country in anticipation of the strike called by Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition in a bid to pressurise the country's electoral commission (ZEC) to release presidential election results.

Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change has been accused by police of trying to cause mayhem with the strike, launched on the back of a failed court bid to force the release of the March 29 presidential poll.

National police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said police had been deployed throughout the country and "those who breach the peace will be dealt with severely and firmly".

"The call by the MDC Tsvangirai faction is aimed at disturbing peace and will be resisted firmly by the law enforcement agents whose responsibility is to maintain law and order in any part of the country," he said.

The impact of any general strike is likely to be muted as unemployment is already running at more than 80 percent.

Previous stay-aways called by the opposition and its allies in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions have flopped with few of the people still in work wanting to risk a day's pay.

However the opposition is aware that President Robert Mugabe still exerts an iron grip over the security forces and is wary of sending its supporters on to the streets to protest the current impasse.

Police have banned all political rallies.

In March last year Tsvangirai himself sustained serious head injuries as the government cracked down on opposition attempts to stage an anti-government rally.

Tensions have been steadily mounting in the southern African nation over the poll, which Tsvangirai says he won outright while Mugabe's ruling party is preparing for a run off.

In a further sign of mounting unrest, the opposition claimed that one of its election agents had been stabbed to death by Mugabe supporters over the weekend in what it claimed was the first politically motivated killing since the polls.

Police confirmed that the agent, Tapiwa Mubwanda, had been killed but said the motive had yet to be established.

A petition by the MDC to get the high court to call for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to immediately declare the outcome was on Monday dismissed with costs by Justice Tendai Uchena.

This was a double blow to the opposition after a summit of southern African leaders in Zambia at the weekend merely called for results to be announced "expeditiously", without criticising the Zimbabwean government or Mugabe.

Now the MDC is relying on the strike, as the two parties trade vote-rigging allegations and challenges to the parliamentary election result.

The MDC on Monday launched a court bid to challenge the result of 60 parliamentary seats won by ZANU-PF, and is also challenging ZEC's decision to recount 23 constituencies which could overthrow their parliamentary majority.

"The power is in our hands. Zimbabweans have been taken for granted for too long. We demand that the presidential election results be announced now," read MDC flyers calling on everyone from bus drivers to street vendors to join in.

The United States and Britain will raise the Zimbabwe crisis at a high-level meeting in the UN Security Council Wednesday despite South African opposition, Western diplomats said late Monday.

"We intend to highlight our concern for Zimbabwe," Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations told AFP. "We will be raising Zimbabwe, among other issues."

The occasion will a meeting to be hosted by South Africa, which chairs the 15-member council this month, to discuss ways to boost security cooperation between the United Nations and the African Union.

Chang said the delay in releasing officials results of Zimbabwe's March 29 presidential poll would also be taken up in bilateral meetings during the gathering.

Participants are to include South African President Thabo Mbeki, his counterparts from Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Somalia and Tanzania as well as Prime Ministers Gordon Brown of Britain and Romano Prodi of Italy.

Another Western diplomat said Brown was also likely to bring up Zimbabwe in his remarks to the council as well as in bilateral meetings with Mbeki and other leaders.

South Africa's UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said last week that the crisis should not be raised during Wednesday's meeting because it is not on the council's agenda and is best handled by Zimbabwe's neighbors in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Editor's commentary: It is better to protest now to defend election victory even for several months than let the dictator crush you and oppress you for ten more years. People in Serbia know that very well. Their protests in 96/97 and 2000 ousted dictator Milosevic from power and drove him straight to jail where he died in 2006. Bang your drums until Mugabe is gone for good.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- A Chinese ship carrying weapons destined for Zimbabwe's government left the South African harbor where workers refused to unload it Friday and headed for neighboring Mozambique, an independent human rights group said.

The ship sailed from Durban on Friday evening soon after a high court ordered that the cargo not be moved, said Nicole Fritz, director of the Southern Africa Litigation Center, which asked the court to intervene to stop the arms from being transported to politically troubled Zimbabwe.

The ship An Yue Jiang had anchored just outside Durban harbor after receiving permission late Wednesday to dock. Its arrival earlier this week increased concern about tensions in Zimbabwe, where the ruling party and the opposition are locked in a dispute over who won the presidential election.

A South African government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, had confirmed weapons were on board but gave no further details.

Fritz said the Durban High Court granted an order suspending the ship's conveyance permit and saying there should be ''no movement of the containers in which the arms kept and no movement of the ship.''

However, she said, lawyers were told by the court's sheriff that when an attempt was made to serve the order on the ship, the vessel was already sailing away, she said. She said other sources had confirmed the ship was headed for Mozambique, which lies on landlocked Zimbabwe's eastern border.

Port workers in Durban and truck drivers had said earlier in the day that they would not unload the weapons or transport them to Zimbabwe.

The umbrella Congress of South African Trade Unions applauded the stance by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, and reiterated its calls for Zimbabwean electoral officials to release the results of the March 29 presidential election.

''This vessel must return to China with the arms on board, as South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time where there is a political dispute and a volatile situation,'' the union congress said in a statement.

China is one of Zimbabwe's main trade partners and allies.

The union move added to pressure on President Thabo Mbeki to take a harder line on Zimbabwe. Mbeki has argued that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is accused of withholding election results, is unlikely to respond to a confrontational approach.

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, the archbishop of Durban and spokesman of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, called Friday on Mbeki's government ''not to allow any more arms and munitions to enter Zimbabwe through South Africa until an acceptable solution is found to the present situation.''

Mary Robinson, the former U.N. human rights chief, applauded the unions for taking a stand.

''How positive it is that ordinary dockers have refused to allow that boat to go further,'' Robinson said during a conference in Senegal on governance in Africa. ''They as individuals have taken the responsibility. Because they believe it's not right.''

Editor's commentary: Murdering people in Tibet and Darfur is not enough for bloodthirsty communists from China. They want to kill people in Zimbabwe too. Paranoid schizophrenic dictator Mugabe wants to annul opposition election victory and then declare state of emergency and start killing everyone. Although millions in Zimbabwe starve to death every day, Mugabe has plenty of money to buy weapons in China. His goal is clear, he wants to destroy people of Zimbabwe and the one that is helping him achieve that is China. Beijing Olympics in August will be repeat of 1936 Berlin Olympics, nothing but propaganda tool for killers.

Schools crisis deepens as staff flee reported reign of terror by government loyalists.

By Wonder Madiro in Harare

Hundreds of rural schools in Zimbabwe are battling to reopen for the new term this week because most teachers have fled local violence.

War veterans and militias have reportedly unleashed a reign of terror in the countryside, and although many victims are said to be opposition supporters, ordinary teachers have also borne the brunt.

Teachers’ unions say the major targets of the violence are members who were presiding officers during the elections. “These are being accused of rigging the elections in favour of MDC (the opposition Movement for Democratic Change),” said Raymond Majongwe, secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, PTUZ.

“Our teachers are being targeted by the militia. There is no way that they can go back to such dangerous areas.”

Timothy Rusere, an English teacher at a rural Mutoko school about 200 kilometres northwest of Harare, is one of the hundreds of teachers who have fled their schools. He said he left after war veterans attacked the school at midnight.

“They arrived two weeks ago, rounded up all the teachers and started accusing us of supporting the opposition,” said Rusere, who is now staying with his in-laws in Harare.

Three teachers known to be active members of the opposition, he said, were severely beaten up, “When they said they would come the next day to deal with the rest of us, I knew things were getting bad so the next morning I packed my bags and left.”

Rusere’s colleagues, who stayed, sustained serious bruises during the attack. They have since fled the school.

The prospect of a run-off presidential vote is not helping matters either.

The ruling ZANU-PF lost control of the lower house of parliament in the March 29 elections, for the first time since 1980, when Zimbabwe became independent from Britain.

President Robert Mugabe is also widely believed to have lost the presidential election to MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai, even though the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, ZEC, has been holding on to the election results for the past month.

Violence ensued in the aftermath of the polls.

“Hate speeches are being uttered against teachers. Some are being systematically assaulted,” said Majongwe. The union said it has told teachers to abandon their schools once threats are made.

PTUZ, which represents about 12,000 teachers, said it would call a national solidarity strike if there were further reports of violence against teachers.

The situation has worsened the crisis in the education sector, which has been hit by a massive brain drain. Reports say 8,000 teachers have left the country since the beginning of the year because of poor working conditions.

Thomas Karwe, who teaches mathematics in Dambamadzura in Gokwe, said he was warned by some of his colleagues against coming back to the school because his name was at the top of a hit list.

“They said the war veterans had come to the school looking for me,” said Karwe. “I will not be going back to work until my security is assured.

“My workmates tell me that some of the houses at the school have been taken over by militias who are camping there.”

Teachers have long been regarded as community leaders and opinion makers, particularly in the rural areas, and often they have found themselves the target of militias loyal to the governing party.

Mavis Rugare, a teacher from the mining town of Shamva northwest of Harare, was part of a group that fled their homes after an attack by ZANU-PF militia in mid-April.

She narrated her ordeal at the hands of ruling party supporters to members of the media at the offices of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, Zimrights.

“My house was burnt and everything taken away from me, including my cellphone and teaching items,” she said.

Rugare is one of the hundreds of opposition supporters who are seeking refuge at safe houses organised by the MDC.

A report released on April 30 by Zimrights told of the extent of violence in both rural and urban areas, where property is being destroyed and people are being displaced and assaulted.

“A humanitarian crisis is unfolding and we are hoping other organisations will be able to help. The official number of those displaced so far is about 400 but this is just the tip of the iceberg of what is happening in our country at the moment,” said Kucaca Phulu, Zimrights national chairperson.

About 300 MDC supporters who had sought refuge at the party offices in Harare were arrested last week but released without charge this week.

“Our members are being brutalised,” said Nelson Chamisa, the MDC spokesperson.

The MDC said that 15 of its supporters have been killed by followers of ZANU-PF since the March 29 elections.

The government, however, has denied that ZANU-PF has been responsible for any of the violence, saying instead that the MDC is the only guilty party.

Mugabe's chief spokesperson, George Charamba, released a statement on April 29 in which he accused the opposition of deliberately stirring up tensions.

"There is a flurry of distortions and irresponsible statements which are vainly calculated to heighten tension to spark incidents of politically motivated crimes around the country," said Charamba.

But human rights organisations have been reporting an upsurge in politically-motivated violence cases throughout the country.

The Zimbabwe Peace Project said in its latest report that it had noticed an “alarming increase” in incidents of violence and human rights abuses committed by soldiers, adding that accounts by some of the soldiers’ victims were “synonymous with a country at war”.

For example, an MDC supporter in Uzumba, once a ZANU-PF stronghold, told of how he was “nearly castrated” by assailants, just because he had chosen to support the opposition party.

Wonder Madiro is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

New wave of repression as Mugabe prepares for second round of leadership contest.

By Jabu Shoko in Harare

President Robert Mugabe is heaping pressure on the country’s civil society organisations and the human rights lawyers who represent them ahead of the presidential run-off later this month.

On June 5, Zimbabwe’s public service minister Nicholas Goche ordered all non-government organisations, NGOs, to stop their work, saying they had violated certain conditions.

At the same time, IWPR has been inundated with reports that since the beginning of June, NGOs, have come under siege from marauding state security agents, with more than a dozen raided in the past week and scores of officials arrested.

On June 6, armed state security agents stormed the head offices of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, CZC, claiming the umbrella body of hundreds of civil society organisations was running an illegal broadcasting operation – charges that CZC officials vehemently deny.

Three days later, heavily armed riot police, national intelligence officers and military forces raided the offices of the Ecumenical Centre. This religious complex houses the offices of the Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe, Ecumenical Support Services, the Christian Alliance, the Zimbabwe National Pastors' Conference and the Padare Men’s Forum on Gender.

According to officials from the respective organisations, the state security agents carted away documents, computers, laptops and hard drives before arresting some 15 people, including interns and newspaper columnist Pius Wakatama.

“I am shocked they are doing this to Christian organisations,” said Useni Sibanda, the coordinator of Christian Alliance.

“It is a deliberate crackdown on civil society organisations. This election is going to be far from free and fair with this violence.”

A day earlier, in the remote town of Binga in Matabeleland North, an undisputed rural stronghold of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, state security agents arrested 14 members of groups organised by the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe, MMPZ.

Meanwhile, two prominent human rights lawyers have fled to South Africa after receiving threats to their lives, according to Irene Petras, director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, ZLHR.

Another human rights lawyer was living in fear for representing MDC officials and other clients perceived to be allies of the opposition.

On May 30, the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and its network partners advised ZLHR that it had received Andrew Makoni in its offices in Johannesburg.

Makoni had acted for a wide range of human rights defenders, with leaders and members of the MDC forming the foundation of his legal practice.

He had fled the country after receiving credible information that he was on a list of human rights lawyers targeted for imminent assassination for representing MDC members.

This information has allegedly been independently verified from two separate sources who spoke two other lawyers, and has also been publicised by the African Bar Association.

He and other human rights lawyers were reportedly to be “made an example of” to dissuade anyone else from taking up the defence of targeted human rights defenders in the run-up to the presidential election run-off, and in the face of escalating human rights violations in several provinces, according to information obtained from ZLHR.

Harrison Nkomo, a human rights lawyer with ZLHR who has represented media practitioners, and members of the MDC, has also fled the country after receiving the same information, and believing his life to be under threat.

On June 9, ZLHR was advised that various individuals had gathered around the vehicle of lawyer Alec Muchadehama, outside his legal practice in Harare and were waiting for him to emerge from his office.

Vehicles were parked at the exits of the building, as well as outside his home. Realising that these were not ordinary police officers sent to arrest him, the lawyer immediately fled and is now in hiding.

He, too, has represented a significant number of human rights defenders, including MDC leaders and members, and a number of NGOs, such as the National Constitutional Assembly, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the Christian Alliance.

“These are the most recent examples of a deeply disturbing clampdown on the legal profession, but are not the only cases to have been reported recently to ZLHR,” said Petras.

“Lawyers [are] reported to have alleged that ‘mass arrests’ are being planned in the final weeks before the election run-off, and that human rights lawyers are considered a barrier to ensuring that targeted individuals remain in custody while the election is ongoing.”

Petras said ZLHR wished to warn of the dire consequences ahead for human rights defenders, civic organisations and political party leaders and members as a result of the official clampdown.

“Such targeting of lawyers – even the mere allegation that there exists a list of lawyers for elimination – has a chilling effect on all members of the legal profession and, by implication, on the affected individuals whose rights they seek to protect,” she said.

Petras urged human rights lawyers to exercise caution in relation to their security, and to immediately report all threats and attacks to the responsible authorities, to the Law Society of Zimbabwe and to ZLHR, as well as to Southern African Development Community, SADC, diplomatic representatives and regional observers in Zimbabwe.

The crackdown on lawyers and Christian organisations comes hard on the heels of a government directive banning humanitarian organisations from distributing food in the country.

Nicholas Goche, the minister of public service, labour and social welfare, claimed the decision to bar the relief agencies from distributing food was arrived at after ZANU-PF discovered that the “food was being used to campaign for the MDC”.

Meanwhile, the MDC continues to be subjected to government pressure.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai claimed at a media briefing on June 10 that at least 66 of his party’s supporters have been killed. The MDC leader has been picked up several times since his return to Zimbabwe, and the party’s secretary-general Tendai Biti was arrested minutes after he set foot on the tarmac at Harare Airport on June 12.

Eric Matinenga, a newly elected MDC legislator for Buhera West, was this week arrested for the second time in as many days. The authorities have ignored a high court order obtained by his lawyers ordering his release.

Minister of justice, legal and parliamentary affairs Patrick Chinamasa said on June 10 that he was easing pressure on jails ahead of the June 27 presidential run-off by releasing petty criminals to create room for people arrested for politically motivated crimes.

There is a fear some civil society representatives will be locked up on trumped-up charges.

MDC insiders claim Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe but failed to secure an absolute majority in the disputed March 29 election, is under pressure to forge a government of national unity with the incumbent, in a bid to stem the rising violence.

Jabu Shoko is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

By BARRY BEARAK and CELIA W. DUGGER

JOHANNESBURG — Tonderai Ndira was a shrewd choice for assassination: young, courageous and admired. Kill him and fear would pulse through a thousand spines. He was an up-and-comer in Zimbabwe’s opposition party, a charismatic figure with a strong following in the Harare slums where he lived.

There were rumors his name was on a hit list. For weeks he prudently hid out, but his wife, Plaxedess, desperately pleaded with him to come home for a night. He slipped back to his family on May 12.

The five killers pushed through the door soon after dawn, as Mr. Ndira, 30, slept and his wife made porridge for their two children. He was wrenched from his bed, roughed up and stuffed into the back seat of a double-cab Toyota pickup. “They’re going to kill me,” he cried, Plaxedess said. As the children watched from the door, two men sat on his back, a gag was shoved in his mouth and his head was yanked upward, a technique of asphyxiation later presumed in a physician’s post mortem to be the cause of death.

Zimbabwe will have a presidential runoff election on Friday, an epochal choice between Robert Mugabe, the 84-year-old liberation hero who has run the nation for nearly three decades, and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. But in the morbid and sinister weeks recently passed, the balloting has been preceded by a calculated campaign of bloodletting meant to intimidate the opposition and strip it of some of its most valuable foot soldiers.

Even as hundreds of election observers from neighboring countries were deployed across Zimbabwe in the past few days, the gruesome killings and beatings of opposition figures have continued.

The body of the wife of Harare’s newly chosen mayor was found Wednesday, her face so badly bashed in that even her own brother only recognized her by her brown corduroy skirt and plaited hair. On Thursday, the bodies of four more opposition activists turned up after they had been abducted by men shouting ruling party slogans.

The strategic killing of activists and their families has deprived the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, not only of its dead stalwarts but also of hundreds of other essential workers who have fled while reasonably supposing they will be next.

At least 85 activists and supporters of the party have been killed, according to civic group tallies, including several operatives who, while little known outside Zimbabwe, were mainstays within it. They were thorns in the side of the government, frequently in and out of jail, bold enough to campaign in the no-go areas where Mr. Mugabe’s party previously faced little competition.

“They’re targeting people who are unknown because cynically they know they can get away with it,” said David Coltart, an opposition senator.

One such target was Better Chokururama, a 31-year-old activist with an appetite for bravado and fisticuffs, nicknamed “Texas” for both the cowboy hats he favored and the moniker of a torture camp from which he once escaped. He was abducted on April 19, and his legs crushed by his captors with boulders.

He said in an interview afterward, as he lay with both legs in casts, that he had told his captors “that beating people would not change anything because the opposition had beaten the governing party, ZANU-PF, in the elections.”

“They laughed loudly,” he said, “then threw me out of the moving vehicle.” Weeks later, he was snatched again, with two other opposition activists; the three bodies were discovered separately and identified by family members.

But the violence has been aimed not only at campaigners but at voters as well. So-called pungwe sessions, the Shona word for all-night vigils, have become common in areas where people once loyal to President Mugabe dared vote against him in the first round of voting on March 29. Villagers are rousted from their homes and herded together. Suspected opposition supporters are then called forward to be thrashed.

In Chaona, a village in Mashonaland Central Province, a man named Fredrick said he was among 10 suspected opposition supporters tortured for five hours under a tree. One man was caught while trying to escape. “They tied his genitals with an elastic band and beat him until he passed out and died,” said Fredrick, who asked that his last name not be used in order to protect himself. He said a second man was killed after his tormentors dripped bubbles of burning plastic on his naked body.

Prosper Mutema, 34, from Mtoko in Mashonaland East, said he was among dozens captured on June 4, taken to a torture camp and beaten all night with sticks and clubs called knobkerries. In the morning, he was ordered to hand over a cow as a “repentance fee.” Lacking so costly an animal, he pleaded for a more modest penitence, eventually winning his freedom with a bucket of maize meal and a chicken.

There have been dozens of killings, thousands of beatings and tens of thousands of people displaced, civic groups, doctors and relief agencies say. Though roadblocks seal off rural areas where most of the abuse is taking place, there are so many surviving victims and witnesses that human rights workers and journalists have been able to catalog much of the brutality. Pain is often inflicted through hours-long pummeling of the soles of the feet and the flesh of the buttocks.

“When Mugabe declares himself the winner, the world must know what he has done,” said the opposition’s director of elections, Ian Makone, who has gone underground and travels only at night. Two of his chief aides have been killed; several others have scattered into exile.

Mr. Mugabe, on the other hand, is campaigning boldly. A vigorous octogenarian, his life span is already more than double the national average in this destitute country, where inflation has gone so berserk that a loaf of bread now costs $30 billion Zimbabwean dollars.

Mr. Mugabe openly portrays the election in the terminology of warfare, a battle to preserve sovereignty against puppets put up by the British, the nation’s onetime colonial masters who in his view want to reclaim the land for white domination. Either he will win, he insists, or he will keep power by force.

“We are not going to give up our country for a mere X on a ballot,” he said in a speech last week. “How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?”

The opposition claims that Mr. Tsvangirai won a majority in the earlier round of voting, and that the government manipulated the count to force a runoff and ready its violent response.

Whatever the actual count, hard-liners in the governing party agreed on a “war-like/military style strategy” to recapture votes that had drifted astray and win a second ballot, according to the minutes of one of their meetings obtained from a ZANU-PF official.

“This is not going to be an election,” said one senior ZANU-PF official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the plans are secret. “The election happened in March. This is going to be a war. We are going all out to win this, using all state resources at our disposal.”

Army officers were sent to every province to direct the strategy, which eventually employed soldiers, intelligence agents, policemen and paramilitary groups known as war veterans and youth brigades called the green bombers, the senior official said. Ward by ward voting results dictated the campaign’s geography. In the Zaka district of Masvingo, once a reliable ZANU-PF stronghold, Mr. Tsvangirai won in March, and the opposition party also took three of four seats in Parliament and the Senate seat. Reprisals began within weeks.

Names of the opposition’s poll workers had been published in the newspaper as required by law, and these workers seem to have been systematically identified for nighttime beatings. Hundreds of them have since fled, leaving their polling stations vulnerable to ballot stuffing on Friday, said the constituency’s senator-elect, Misheck Marava. He said his wife and children were savagely beaten with chains and whips.

Then, on June 4 at 4:15 a.m., 13 men led by soldiers attacked the local opposition office at Jerera Growth Point, where some of those displaced by violence had sought a haven. At least two men were killed. The office was set afire with gasoline.

As one of survivor of the blaze, Isaac Mbanje, lay with maddening pain in a Harare hospital, skin peeling from his raw wounds and fluids seeping through the bandages on his charred hands, he described his ordeal.

One of the assailants ordered him: “Lie down! Keep quiet!” Then shots were fired from an AK-47. “One of the guys who was shot fell on my body,” Mr. Mbanje said. Then the attackers set both the dead and living alight.

Tichanzi Gandanga, the opposition’s director of elections in Harare, said he was abducted April 23 by men who blindfolded and gagged him and then thrust him into a truck. As the vehicle raced into the countryside, he was badly beaten and stripped before being dumped onto the road, where he was beaten and kicked and then, as he hovered near unconsciousness, run over.

The men attacking him were armed and could have shot him, Mr. Gandanga said. He is not sure why they left him alive, or even if they meant to.

“We had an election machinery with some important foot soldiers,” Mr. Gandanga said. “These soldiers were identified and eliminated.”

Opposition leaders assumed the carnage would stop once election observers arrived to monitor the vote. But that has hardly proved true.

Emmanuel Chiroto, 41, was elected to represent his ward in Harare. Fearful of attacks on his family, he sent his wife, Abigail, 27, and son, Ashley, 4, to stay with her mother outside the city. But on Sunday, fellow city councilors chose him as Harare’s mayor, and his proud wife came home the next day to celebrate, he said.

Soon after she arrived, he was called away because a ward chairman had been beaten up. While Mr. Chiroto was away, two truckloads of men firebombed his home and abducted his wife and child. Opposition party officials hurriedly contacted Tanki Mothae, a Lesotho native who is a key manager of the election monitors from the Southern African Development Community.

“The house was completely destroyed inside,” Mr. Mothae said in an interview. “The furniture, everything, was burned to ashes.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Chiroto’s little boy was dropped off at a police station. Wednesday, his wife’s battered body was found in a Harare morgue.

Mr. Chiroto still has not had the heart to tell Ashley that his mother is dead, he said. The boy told his father he had sat on his blindfolded mother’s lap as she was held captive and then he was left behind as soldiers took her away.

“We need to go get Mommy,” the 4-year-old has told his father over and over. “We have to go! She’s in the bush. Let’s go to Mommy!”

Four journalists contributed reporting from Harare, Zimbabwe.

LONDON - Queen Elizabeth II stripped Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe of his ceremonial knighthood on Wednesday — a highly unusual move meant to show Britain's revulsion with the human rights abuses of his regime.

The queen acted on the advice of Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said Mugabe should have the honor revoked because of widespread violence and intimidation of Zimbabwe's opposition ahead of a presidential runoff Friday.

Britain — the former colonial power in Zimbabwe — and the United States said they won't recognize the result because opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has withdrawn, saying his supporters were at risk.

Mugabe was made an honorary knight in 1994, when he was considered an anti-colonial hero. Honorary knighthoods are conferred on people who are not British citizens but are recommended by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and approved by the queen.

The late Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu was stripped of his title in 1989 at the height of the Balkan nation's revolution.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that Britain no longer recognizes Mugabe as Zimbabwe's legitimate leader.

"This action has been taken as a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe over which President Mugabe has presided," the Foreign Office said.

Editor's commentary: We all know how Ceausescu ended his political career so it is reasonable to expect that Mugabe will finish his career the same way.