LITMIR.BIZ

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in the streets. MDC and civic organizations were again under assault in early 2007: on 11 March, the riot police brutally disrupted a prayer meeting held by civic organizations, killed one activist and injured many, and arrested more than fifty leaders, including Tsvangirai. They were severely beaten while in custody, while others were abducted by the CIO and tortured.⁶⁶ Violence has remained the cornerstone of the government’s attitude toward any form of perceived dissent or criticism.

       The ZANU-PF Militias

      In line with its tradition of violence, ZANU-PF always had a tendency to use certain party organizations to exert coercion and intimidation on its opponents, in addition to or in conjunction with state security agencies. Hence the Women’s League and the Youth League were mobilized as the party shock troops during electoral campaigns. The ZANU-PF youth and women’s leagues have been used in the past to intimidate opponents in the high-density suburbs and the rural areas in what was euphemistically called “door-to-door” campaigning, a tradition going back to 1963, when ZAPU and ZANU were fighting for political control of the African townships and their rivalry left hundreds of people maimed with property destroyed as the Rhodesian police stood by. The same tactic was employed again in 1980 and 1985, against ZAPU, and in 1990 and 1995, against ZUM and other opposition parties. ZANU-PF youth and women’s leagues disrupted opposition party rallies and serious violence erupted; they also harassed people at night.⁶⁷

      The violent behavior of ZANU-PF youth and women was at that time already openly condoned by Mugabe who even asked his supporters to intensify the door-to-door campaign. When FORUM leaders said that their supporters were entitled to defend themselves since the police remained inactive, Mugabe responded during a central committee meeting of his party with a thinly veiled personal threat: “In that dangerous game our side would certainly have more and better arrows and spears than Dumbutshena [Forum president], now nicknamed Dumbutshaka, and his handful of warriors can ever hope to wield. Will the former chief justice really be able personally to avoid and duck those arrows he is inviting?”⁶⁸ Alleging that the leader of the FORUM, dubbed a party of European settlers by government’s propaganda, was manipulated by whites, the president added: “They will come off, in a contrived violent conflict situation, not second best, but not best at all. Let them be warned.”⁶⁹ This was in 1994. Already the same Mugabe who would claim in 2001 that he and his party had “degrees in violence.” The ZANU-PF Youth League had also taken part in the Gukurahundi along with the Fifth Brigade and the CIO, and a lesson had been learned then: mass repression can be more easily denied when performed by “uncontrolled” militias rather than the regular army. However, before February 2000 there was nothing on the scale of the War Vets and the militias called “green bombers,” who have since waged the sustained, nationwide campaign of violence detailed above. It seems necessary therefore, to look at the creation and dynamics of the ZANU-PF militias,⁷⁰ the shock troops of the Third Chimurenga.

       War Vets

      When Hitler Hunzvi and his supporters of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) rioted in the streets of Harare, in July–August 1997, after the plundering of the War Victims Compensation Fund⁷¹ by the regime’s “big men” was revealed, press commentators mistook them for the most determined opponents of the government and were astonished to see ZNLWVA members spearheading the farm invasions. Although the fiction that they were acting independently from the government soon dissipated, their exact relationship with the ruling party is still contested and has evolved since 2000.⁷² War Vets invading the farms were transported in army, police, or District Development Fund trucks (the DDF having been for a long time a ZANU-PF instrument of patronage in the rural areas) and were given army tents and food rations. Money from the president’s office was channeled to the War Vets by party officials (Z$20 million was allocated for the 2000 elections campaign and another Z$15 million was budgeted in 2001). ZNLWVA operated from two-story headquarters in a government building in Harare, and its shock troops were hosted during much of 2000 and 2001 by the ZANU-PF headquarters, where some offices were used to torture people. Indeed, ever since 2000 War Vet leaders repeated that they would use all means to keep Mugabe in power.

      ZNLWVA was formed in the early 1990s under the ruling party’s patronage, as part of a constellation of similar groupings to promote the economic emancipation of former war combatants⁷³ and their social and welfare needs. Although many of them were employed in the police and the army and others had sought education abroad and found jobs in the state apparatus or the private sector, some remained destitute ten years after independence and grew very bitter when witnessing the social impact of ESAP and the blatant corruption of the ruling elite. Although ZNLWVA once claimed a 40,000 strong membership, it is difficult to assess its popularity among ex-combatants. Some ZANU-PF backbenchers like Margaret Dongo and Ruth Chinamano promoted the association’s agenda in Parliament as a convenient political resource against the party “big men.” Dongo’s vehement accusations against minister of social affairs Nathan Shamuyarira, of neglecting the war veterans’ welfare was one of the reasons for her fall from favor in 1995. Indeed, since Independence, Mugabe has made use of former guerrillas in the army, the police, and the CIO to drive out ZAPU/ZIPRA in the 1980s⁷⁴ and prevent this constituency from developing as an independent power base within or outside of the ruling party.

      There was a new turn of events, however, when the ambitious “doctor” Hunzvi was elected chairman of ZNLWVA in 1995. Despite his claims, Hunzvi had no war record since he had spent most of the war years abroad—in Romania where he contracted his unconditional admiration for the communist dictator Ceausescu, and in Poland where he did medical studies. He was briefly employed in a government hospital when he returned from Poland in 1990. Hunzvi, a racist by his own admission, proud of his chosen Chimurenga name “Hitler,” claimed at the same time to be a dedicated communist. However, his Polish former wife publicly denounced his male chauvinism and domestic violence. Hunzvi had become popular with the ZNLWVA rank and file by granting them medical certificates of disability to support their bogus claims of war injuries submitted to the War Victims Compensation Fund. Hunzvi also obliged the ruling party “big men” and some of their relatives, who never saw action or were too young during the liberation war, with even more dubious certificates that enabled them to claim unreal percentages of disability. For good measure Hunzvi included himself among the disabled veterans and was granted a total of Z$517,536 for a 117 percent disability.⁷⁵ Thus, Hunzvi actively participated in the plundering of the fund at the expense of the real victims as the government commission of inquiry, headed by Judge Godfrey Chidyausiku, later established. However, when payments were suspended in mid-1997, the ZNLWVA leadership cleverly deflected the anger of those who had not yet benefited by encouraging them to take to the streets and to squeeze concessions out of Mugabe, holding him hostage while he attended a meeting at the ZANU-PF headquarters in August 1997. A package of a Z$50,000 gratuity and a Z$2,000 monthly pension was awarded to each registered veteran.

      Mugabe’s first reaction was to punish Hunzvi, who was the only person cited in the Commission’s report to be subsequently prosecuted by the state and held in jail for a time in 1999. Soon after this, war veterans were co-opted into the grand strategy of farm invasions. Instead of receiving more gratuities that the public treasury could not afford—as the lump sums granted in 1997 had already been eaten up by inflation—Hunzvi’s militant faction of ZNLWVA would spearhead the campaign of violence and be rewarded with land. This was to become the most critically damaging of their actions. A brilliant ploy of enrolling this discontented fringe of the regime into the president’s political survival campaign was to follow in order to channel their frustration toward the whites and the MDC. It prevented a sizable constituency within ZANU-PF from becoming a powerful internal opposition, while at the same time the president could use this ruthless mercenary force to fight his enemies. More important, as the farm invasions commenced, Mugabe could pretend to dissociate himself from these activists and claim that he could not order the police to remove them from the farms without risking a bloodbath. More brazenly, he observed that they were merely “demonstrating” for their right to land. By constantly denying the obvious links between his government and the militias he obscured his ultimate responsibility for the beatings and murders. By so doing, Mugabe could dupe, at first, his SADC and other African colleagues into believing that the

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