New election run-off date

Government announces election to be held June 27

It looks like my government source had his information slightly wrong yesterday when I revealed to you that the date for the run-off of the presidential election would be in August. My apologies.

It was announced today in a government gazette that the poll would be taking place on June 27 - still more than a month after May 24, which was when the MDC were expecting the election to be called.

The government has introduced an emergency law that allows it to call the election within 90 days of the results of the first round being released, hence perhaps my source's confusion. Previously the deadline for the second round was within three weeks, which is where the date of May 24 came from.

The opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has confirmed he will contest the poll but there are widespread fears here that Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF will use the additional time to harass and intimidate MDC voters.

No election until August

Zanu-PF delay the run-off election to give their campaign of terror time to work

Harare, Zimbabwe, Wednesday May 14, 5 pm

Ahead of announcements expected in Zimbabwe's state-run media tomorrow, I can reveal that the date of the much-anticipated Presidential election run-off will be 90 days after May 2, the date of the official announcement of the disputed results.

This means the poll will be in August, and not as expected on May 24. The news comes as a shock to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which had anticipated that, as stated in the Electoral Act, the run-off would take place just 21 days after the official announcement.

My government source tells me that the decision has been taken by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission after its arm was twisted by Mugabe's Joint Operation Command. The Central Intelligence Organsiation has reported that the terror campaign in the countryside, fully reported on this page, has been effective, but more time is needed to ensure a satisfactory run-off result.

The source said: "In 90 days Zanu-PF will make sure the MDC  is dead and buried. The militia will beat everyone into voting for Mugabe."

The barbarity continues

Another atrocity against the people of Zimbabwe

As our politicians squabble, debate, impose conditions and argue, as international statesmen fudge and mumble their vague support for our suffering, it is easy to forget that down the dust roads and rural tracks of this country a daily horror is taking place. This is another eye-witness account.

The village of Chiweshe is near the small town of Mazoe, some 150 kilometres north of Harare. A Zanu-PF militia force, numbering about 20 and led, I am informed, by retired army major Cairo Mhandu, arrived at the village late one night last week.

Four residents of the village, all of them known to be activists and supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were rounded up. Then, while other villages were forced to watch, the torture began.

Day by day the pressure grows

How Zanu-PF is attempting to make sure that if votes are cast, they are for Mugabe

While the bullying, beatings and killings continue in the countryside, in the towns it's a case of death threats, imprisonment, and dirty tricks. Zanu-PF appears willing to try every move in the book to make sure that if there is a full re-run of the presidential election it will end in victory for Robert Mugabe.

Whether the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai will agree to the re-run still hangs in the balance at the time of writing. But meanwhile the Mugabe men are going into overdrive.

In prison this morning are two journalists - Davison Maruziva, editor of the weekly independent Standard, and Howard Burditt, a Reuters photographer.Their crime, apparently, is being journalists.

Women face violence on our streets

The violent end to a peaceful demonstration by Zimbabwe's women

Harare, Zimbabwe, May 6

Yesterday I stood in the streets of Bulawayo and watched Mugabe's riot police launch a savage attack on a peaceful demonstration by the women's civic organisation, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA).

Some hundreds of WOZA members had gathered to march in protest at the politically motivated violence which has left more than 20 supporters of the opposition MDC dead and hundreds injured and homeless. Their intention was to march to the High Court with a demand that the election by a clear majority of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai as President be declared official.

Before the march could begin a police riot squad arrived on the scene and began attacking the demonstrators, mostly women and children, with batons. Several arrests were made, and many injuries suffered. But worse was to come.

Ncube's mistress dies

The sad end of the woman at the centre of the scandal

Rosemary Sibanda, the woman at the eye of the infidelity storm that engulfed the then Archbishop Pius Ncube, and eventually forced him to quit, died at Bulawayo's Mpilo General Hospital on Friday.

Ncube, the former head of the Bulawayo diocese of the Roman Catholic Church and a vocal critic of Robert Mugabe's government, admitted to the adulterous affair with Sibanda shortly before he was reassigned to the Vatican.

Rosemary died just after noon on Friday. Hospital authorities say she had been admitted on April 30, suffering from pneumonia. "She was very frail when admitted," a nurse at the well-run but poorly equipped hospital said. "We tried to save her life but it was too late."

Her husband, Onesimus Sibanda, is suing Ncube for Z$5 trillion, accusing him of adultery, and claiming that Rosemary infected him with HIV which she allegedly contracted from the Archbishop.

Sleeping in the tall grass

How victims of the Zanu-PF countryside purge pass the night

Mercy Chiusaru is six years old. When I meet her she is settling down for the night in the tall grass by the side of a road in Muzarabani. It is a chilly night, and her father, Clever Chiusaru covers her with a thin sheet.

Her sister, Taizivel, aged eight, left the family farm to go to school that morning. Then the Zanu-PF militia arrived, and drove the family out. Taizivel hasn't been seen since.

Clever Chiusaru tells me:  "I don't know if I will ever see her again. I dare not go back to the farm - they will kill me."

Chiusaru voted MDC in the elections.

A few yards away Mbuya Manjazi, who is a frail 74, wraps herself in a threadbare towel before trying to sleep. She too was driven from her home.

It's official - Tsvangirai won

The poll result is finally announced  - but will it be accepted?

Zimbabwe's election officials today finally did what the world has been asking them to do for weeks - they announced the official result of the presidential election. They reported that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition MDC, beat President Mugabe with 47.9 per cent of the vote.

This result, if accepted, means a re-run of the poll, in order to produce a winner with over 50 per cent support. The MDC have consistently claimed that Tsvangirai won the original poll by more than 50 per cent, and have said they would accept no other result.

Tsvangirai himself has been quoted as saying he would agree to a re-run if the second election were overseen by the United Nations - something that Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party would dismiss out of hand.

Observers on the ground believe that, with the on-going Zanu-PF-inspired campaign of violence and murder, with Tsvangirai himself in virtual exile, and with many leading MDC activists in hiding, no new and fair election is possible.

The victims of the killing squads

How Mugabe's hard men are attempting to eliminate the opposition activists

Many totally innocent and non-political Zimbabweans have fallen victim to the Zanu-PF terror gangs who roam both town and countryside today. But behind the picture of random persecution and death it is possible to isolate many deliberate and targeted attacks. Here are two of them.

Tichanzii Gandanga was the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party's election agent for Harare province, and indeed, with no thanks to Robert Mugabe, he still is. But he can barely stand today, let alone walk. Last Wednesday, at about 6.0 pm, four men arrived suddenly at his central Harare office.

"They told me I knew my crimes, and had to confess," Gandanga told me, from his bed in a private hospital, which I've been asked not to name.

The charge is high treason!

The machiavellian plan that lies behind today's raids

Harare, Zimbabwe, April 25, 16.30

Sources high in the Zanu-PF police and security forces confirmed for me today that behind today's widely-reported raids on the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and other offices lies a plot to arraign leading opposition figures on trumped-up charges of high treason.

Targeted for arrest and subsequent accusation are the MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti, the party spokesman Nelson Chamisa, and the executive director of the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) Rindai Chipfunde-Vava.

My sources tell me that the effect will be to ensure that, even if the courts eventually throw out the charges, the MDC and the ZESN will be effectively paralysed. And with MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Botswana and fearing for his life, Zanu-PF will be free to continue their campaign of intimidation and terror.

Fortunately all three of the targeted indivuduals - Chamisa, Biti and Chipfunde-Vava - were tipped off about the raids and have gone into hiding. The arrests that were made mainly involved victims of militia violence, who were at the MDC offices to seek sanctuary.