President Robert Mugabe has committed crimes against humanity towards the citizens of his country. Towards his enemies and rivals, he has shown no mercy. Towards the women of his own country, he has shown the most vicious contempt, allowing mass rapes, beatings, murder and destruction of the women and their families to go unchallenged.
Mugabe, 85 years old, in power since 1980, has made his nation a pariah in the eyes of the world. And no moreso is it seen in how he allows cruel attacks against the defenseless women and girls of Zimbabwe, and how he has nearly run Zimbabwe into the ground with callous disregard for the health, safety, and welfare of millions of Zimbabweans.
Mugabe sits atop a throne of blood in a country where inflation is so bad that in January the government released a $50 billion note—-enough to buy two loaves of bread. Rapacious inflation where photcopying a two-page document came to Z$269 million. The unemployment rate has risen to more than 80%. Last year, Mugabe had agreed to hold a bipartisan election, allowing candidates to run against him, but, during the election, it became painfully obvious that he could only accept himself as the winner of the election, as his supportors launched attacks against the opposition, killing 163 and torturing or beating 5,000.
Mugaba eventually signed a power-sharing agreement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, but has since broken the terms of the agreement and installed his own people at the head of every cabinet.
Meanwhile, health conditions for so many Zimbabweans have reached masive critical status: more than 3,000 Zimbabweans have died from a cholera outbreak since August, 2008.
Not to be left out of the picture is the United States role as a bedfellow with the government of Zimbabwe: although U.S. leaders have called for Mugabe’s resignation, the United States government imports from Zimbabwe nickel and ferrochromium (both used in stainless steel), imports which rose in 2008.
But, it is the horrific rapes of the women and girls of Zimbabwe that is the most sickening results of internecine warfare that Zimbabwe wages against its own citizens, as this Parade Magazine article states. The following is an excerpted article. For the full article click here.
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Just after sundown in early June, Margaret was getting ready for bed when she heard vehicles pull up outside her home in eastern Zimbabwe. She knew who it was: government-affiliated thugs who had come to harass her for working for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the country’s opposition political party. Rifle-wielding youths in fatigues burst into her house and shouted at her to hand over her political posters. She did. They forced Margaret into a truck, drove away, and eventually pulled off the road, yanking her out of the vehicle. “You are a sellout,” the soldiers spat. “You are selling our country.” Then they beat and raped her repeatedly.
Conditions in President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe have deteriorated dramatically over the past year. Inflation has rocketed up to 80 billion percent. A cholera epidemic has killed thousands. Hundreds of thousands are starving from food shortages. Last spring, in the run-up to a presidential election, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence against supporters of MDC rival Morgan Tsvangirai. What is only now emerging is a particularly hideous element of that campaign: the brutal rape of hundreds—perhaps thousands—of opposition women and girls.
As I traveled around Zimbabwe recently, people shared stories with me of friends or relatives who had been abducted, beaten, or tortured. They often told me about rapes as well. The exact number of sexual assaults is impossible to pin down. Betty Makoni, a Zimbabwean activist and rape survivor, said she knows of about 700 women, but she suspects the total is far higher. Some women are also thought to have contracted HIV from their assailants. (In Zimbabwe, 16% of the population is infected.)
Rape can effectively paralyze women, who are usually the ones who sustain their communities through farming, trading, cooking, and child-rearing. Paula Donovan, co-founder of the nonprofit group AIDS-Free World, is working with Makoni and others to collect testimony from victims in order to bring Mugabe to justice. “The bad guys, from the Congo to Zimbabwe to everywhere, have figured out that if you can’t afford guns and bullets, and you have a political or military objective, the most effective, efficient strategy to employ is sexual violence,” she said.
“The tendency in dealing with indictments is always one of war crimes around the use of guns,” said Stephen Lewis, a former deputy executive director of UNICEF and a cofounder of AIDS-Free World. “What we’re trying to convey to the world is that these conflicts have two components: guns and rape. And rape is as important as guns.”
In the six months since AIDS-Free World began hearing testimony from victims of sexual violence, it has gathered affidavits from women representing five of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces. The organization plans to amass reports from a total of 50 women in order to form the basis of a strong criminal case.
Some people believe that 85-year-old President Mugabe will not run in the country’s next election, which is expected to be held within 18 months. But while his power eventually will end, the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of Zimbabwe will carry scars from his regime forever. In putting their cases before the world, Lewis, Donovan, and Makoni hope to bring them some peace.
“These women who have been raped are seeking justice,” Lewis said. “We must somehow get it to them.”
Ann
