"Someone hacked at my legs with a machete"

How one man escaped death at the hands of a Zanu-PF terror squad

It was midnight last Tuesday, and 55-year-old Manyika Kashiri was asleep in the Chigumbu village home in Uzumba that he shares with his wife and four grandchildren. Without warning 50 War Veterans and Zanu-PF youth militia came calling.

They threw stones through his windows and pounded on his door. They shouted curses, demanding to know why he had voted against Mugabe in the election. And it was true, Manyika had indeed, like millions of his fellow-Zimbabweans, voted for Morgan Tsvangirai and the oppositon MDC.

For a few frightening moments Manyika hesitated. But he knew he had to go out and face the mob, to protect his wife and grandchildren. He stepped through the door.

"At once I was hit in the face with a piece of wood. Then somone hacked at my legs with a machete, and I fell. At once they started beating me all over my body, cutting at me with their weapons.

"One of them tried to crush my head with a rock, but I saw it coming and moved, and it his my shoiulder."

He doesn't remember much more from then on. HIs last memory is of the screams of his grandchildren as they watched from the doorway. Then he passed out. The Mugabe mob pushed their way into the house, stole a mobile phone and a shot gun, and left.

It was Manyika's wife who got him to safety. In the morning light she half-supported, half-carried him to a clinic at the Katiyo Business Centre, 12 kilometres away, That's where I met him. still bleeding from the cuts made by machetes and axes, still swollen from club blows.

Doctors at the clinic told me they had been overwhelmed with victims of the random politically-inspired violence that is spreading like a deadly rash across our country today.

And Manyika himself told me that he and his family can never go home again.

Comments

[Duka]

This is very shocking and indeed inhuman in every manner, for how can a follower of a party be so obsessed that taking someone's life becomes so simple! What's the cause that the Zanu-pf mob is persuing? Isnt any citizen allowed to vote as per his/her own personal preference. For me surely the leaders that we have here in africa are largely blind and missguided, insensitive, selfish and unpartriotic! wonder why they come on board to be voted for the benefit of the nations while we openly see that they are indeed selfseeking and evil! These are seeds that the party is planting in Zimbabwe and am scared for sure coz I know that there will be reaping time! The harvest surely will most assuredly be something that we will not be ready to take.
However I plead to God to save their souls and bring them to their knowledge of their ignorance!

[Michael]

Unfortunately Mugabe got into power through intimidation and violence in the first elections after the Rhodesia era, and you also have to remember that quite a few of these 'War Veterans' were (and it seems they like Mugabe have not changed in 28 years) terrorists who were as comfortable butchering groups of Shona and Matabele people as they were fighting the Rhodesian security forces (in fact they were more at home killing innocent civilians because they couldn't defend themselves anywhere near as well).

In the main, I do not believe Robert Mugabe to be ignorant of the actions of his followers or the men under his command ..... he knows exactly what he and they are doing, and it works to his benefit in keeping him as leader. ZANU PF is not a political party, it is simply a rebranded ZANLA from the 70s ..... and we all know how far their humanity and loyalty to the people they swore to set 'free' went, The ink on the ballot papers was barely dry before the 5th Brigade were ravaging Matabeleland, killing their own people by the score.

[macpayne]

I've often wondered just how minds like that work... how is it a thought process can be conditioned such that logic is replaced with such extreme bias, reasoning becomes so blindly self-serving, and any consideration for others is replaced by a primitive, sort of animalistic, preservation. Instead of thought and dialouge, they snarl and rail and seethe in anger like cornered beasts the instant they encounter an opposing opinion or should someone question their actions or motives. To them, the only resolution for conflict is violence.

It's not an issue of colour or political orientation or geographical location... it can be found at the extreme fringes of both left and right, without regard to gender or colour, in every corner of the world, and at every economic level. It just amazes me. Its almost like something has altered the brain God gave them, and they've become willing robots supporting whatever doctrine with which they've been programmed.

We see it here with the racists, both black and white, and with those who view Mugabe only as a hero... not simply ignoring the atrocities, but justifying and glorifying them... or convinced that denying them will change fact to fiction.

But, whatever programmed them and changed the child God created into a robot of the Devil, they still have a choice... their energies can be used for good, or it can be used for evil... and in that choice, they chose for themselves their destiny for eternity.

[Michael]

I couldn't have put that better myself mac, and the greatest tragedy is that most of them will get away with it either by the anonymity of not being recognised, or by the old cover story of 'I was only following orders'.

I'm personally not a religious man, and I consider myself a realist ..... but what is happening in Zimbabwe crosses all boundaries without recognising them, which means the only way to kill the ZANU PF beast is to cut off its head. Mugabe and his cronies are the only ones who can be held accountable with certainty.

I can see this situation turning nasty if ZANU win in this manner, and not only from within the borders of Zimbabwe.

[majays]

I don't think these so called War veterans are the ones who fought the seventies war because i think by then these guys were a year or two old. How can a two year old baby fight a war? All these so called veterans are in their early thirties.I think the youngest really veteran has to be fifty years. But to my surprise I haven't seen the fifty year old s running around hacking people with machets.

[Michael]

You'd be surprised at the ages that some of the fighters were ..... I personally wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen one instance with my own eyes.

A boy at Entembane carrying a loaded RPG7 that was bigger than he was .... and he only looked around 8 years old