- Note - The following is a transcript from a program on
South African TV called Carte Blanche. CIO - Central Intelligence Organisation.
- Jan
-
- This week President Thabo Mbeki, together with Nigerian
President Olusegun Obesanjo, met with Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe
as part of a high level delegation aiming to create a dialogue between
Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
-
- By all accounts, it failed to break the deadlock between
the two parties, neither of whom will back down on conditions for dialogue
to take place.
-
- Mugabe has hinted at his desire to step down from leadership,
after a 23-year reign that has been described as despotic and corrupt.
Reports of torture and violent oppression have marred every election and
opposition has been put down with steel-fisted force.
-
- [filmed in secret]
-
- Rape Victim-1 [anonymous]: "They started by beating
up the men and then the women. After assaulting the women I was taken by
seven men to some bushes nearby. They shouted, ëYou women are prostitutes
because you belong to the opposition partyí. They told me, ëPut
down your baby,í but I couldn ít. So they grabbed my baby
off my back. One man held one leg, another held my other leg while another
one raped me."
-
- Rape Victim-2: "I tried to reach out for my child
before they had finished but they said they would cut off its head and
then they would kill me."
-
- [smuggled video tape]
-
- Torture Victim: "They said youíre going to
die because of supporting MDC."
-
- Most of us recognise that Zimbabwe has experienced an
increase in human rights abuses the past few years. Violence and intimidation
have become the order of the day. All ethical boundaries seem to have been
broken and not even a lawyer defending a member of the opposition party
is safe, as Gabriel Shumba well knows.
-
- Gabriel Shumba: "The whole ordeal, the torture,
lasted for nine hours. Aside from the terrible beatings with planks and
baton stick and rubber truncheons, they tied electric wires to my toes
and some on my fingers and one was put in my mouth. The other one was wrapped
around my genitals.
-
- "So they switched on the current and the blast went
through me. At some point I lost consciousness and even lost control of
my bladder."
-
- Gabriel Shumba is a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer, now
living in exile in Tanzania. He had been called by an MDC Member of Parliament
to assist him as he had heard that the police were looking for him.
-
- Gabriel: "As I was taking instructions from him,
about 22 armed riot policemen stormed the room. Some were outside with
guns and we could also see an armoured vehicle later on, which was parked
outside the gates of the hotel. They told me I was being arrested. I asked
them on what grounds. They couldn't say."
-
- Together with his client and his younger brother, he
was ferried to a police station where he was tortured throughout the night.
His case was later dismissed by the magistrate, when he told of his torture,
and he had to flee the country. But even in Tanzania he was being watched.
-
- Gabriel: "Then the high commissioner phones me and
threatens me with deportation, allegedly for anti-government activities
and for training for [with] a view to hauling Mugabe before an international
criminal tribunal in the future."
-
- Bea Abrahams of the Centre for the Study of Violence
and Reconciliation confirms that more and more Zimbabwean torture victims
are arriving in South Africa.
-
- Bea: "At the CSVR we have a trauma clinic and, in
the last couple of months particularly, we have seen on average about ten
referrals of people who have been severely tortured. Many of the victims
have been very brutally beaten. Many of them have been sexually abused.
Many of them have had electric shocks applied to their genitalia."
-
- Derek Watts, Carte Blanche reporter: "Men and women?"
-
- Bea: "In the case of women, what we are seeing is
that women have had objects inserted in their vaginas, for example. This
is clearly systematic. It's consistent. You see the same form of abuse
in all the victims."
-
- The Clinic had a 'no house-calls' policy, but they have
had to change this due to the Zimbabweans' fear of being tracked down by
the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). They now go out and treat
victims in their places of hiding.
-
- We had to meet 'Deborah' [name changed] at a secret location
in Natal, where she told us of her year of abuse in one of the youth training
camps run by the Zimbabwean government. She'd been abducted from her home
at the age of 18 and forced into a youth camp where she was subjected to
indoctrination and torture.
-
- Deborah: "They had 200 girls in the camp. And boys
were 1,500. I had to share a room to sleep with the boys. The boys would
rape the girls. If you cried, you would be beaten by the commander."
-
- When Carte Blanche went undercover in Zimbabwe in 2002
we encountered some youngsters who had run away from a youth camp. Coincidentally,
one of them was Deborah. Then, as now, she told us of her life at Nthabazinduna
Youth Camp near Bulawayo, seen here from the air. She told us how she was
forced to recite Zanu-PF slogans and political ideology, how she was beaten
if she didn't comply and how she only discovered she was pregnant in her
eighth month, her child the product of repeated rapes.
-
- Devi Sankaree-Govender, Carte Blanche reporter: "Did
you know who the father of your baby was?"
-
- Deborah: "No, because the boys raped me again [and
again]."
-
- Throughout history despotic governments have used young
people as part of the state's ideology machine. They tend to be idealistic
and easy to indoctrinate and in Zimbabwe the Youth Militia has been blamed
for some of the worst atrocities.
-
- The youth camps have churned out thousands of young soldiers,
known as the 'Green Bombers'. These are three who have turned their backs
on the life of institutionalised crime and are in hiding from the CIO,
Zimbabwe's 'secret service.' Apart from spreading propaganda, they were
used by the 'war veterans' when taking over farms.
-
- Refugee-1: "We were called there to break everything;
you break the fence, you enter in groups. We let the livestock go. We go
outside, we break the kraals and take the machines."
-
- The farm workers were also attacked and,once again, sexual
assault was a key strategy.
-
- Refugee-1: "The children, small children were raped
- the girls."
-
- Refugee-2: "We were raping them in Nyamandlovo,
Tsholotsho. We've attacked people of MDC. There were many people of MDC
party. There were many."
-
- When applying for a place at a university or college,
many would-be students are told that they first need a certificate from
one of the youth camps and they are also given the promise of jobs afterwards.
But there seems to be a more sinister objective.
-
- Instead of jobs, they found they were working for free
during land invasions.
-
- Refugee-2: "They used to give us beer and dagga.
After that, they tell us on so and so day we are going to so and so farm
to destroy - destroy the farms."
-
- Chris Maroleng of the Institute for Security Studies
says that the idea of the use of youth is seeded in the communist ideology
that Mugabe was exposed to in the 1970s.
-
- Chris: "I think it falls in line with the Maoist
doctrine in terms of civil-military relations that has been used by the
Zimbabwean government from the beginning in 1980. Which basically talks
about a citizen force and the use of the youth to carry out certain of
the policies and projects of the government in power."
-
- Derek Watts, Carte Blanche reporter: "Chris, do
you know what actually happens in these camps?"
-
- Chris: "We've heard reports that when recruits enter
into these camps they go through a process of indoctrination. They go through
training in the use of violence, which includes sometimes the use of torture
and which can also explain why these youth brigades have been implicated
in human rights abuses in Zimbabwe."
-
- Bea: "Effectively what that does is it militarises
a whole layer of society. You have a layer of society who depend on force
to get what they want."
-
- They are taught strategies like economic sabotage on
MDC businesses. A popular tactic is simply burning down people's houses.
Vanessa's parents were killed in this manner.
-
- Vanessa: "...and my mother and my father."
-
- Derek: "Your parents were killed, Vanessa?"
-
- Vanessa: "Yes."
-
- Derek: "What happened?"
-
- Vanessa: "It was Zanu-PF members."
-
- Alice: "I wasn't there, but I was told they were
killed by Zanu-PF members just because Vanessa's father was a counsellor
for their street. They burnt the house while they were sleeping at night
and they killed them."
-
- Alice and Vanessa, together with a friend, fled Zimbabwe
and ended up in Hillbrow. Economic disaster, hunger and intimidation are
forcing many political dissidents to flee across the border to South Africa
illegally. They presume they are entering a safe haven, but this isn't
always the case.
-
- When Alice and Vanessa arrived in Hillbrow they joined
a political pressure group, Concerned Zimbabwean Citizens Abroad. One evening
they were followed and abducted by three men, taken to a remote area and
tortured for information about the group's leader.
-
- Vanessa: "They were beating us hard with sjamboks
and wires."
-
- Alice: "Our friend, who is not around any more,
was told to suck one manís penis."
-
- Derek: "What else did they do?"
-
- Alice: "They urinated in Vanessa's mouth more than
six times. They were all drunk, so whoever wanted to urinate, did it in
Vanessaís mouth."
-
- Derek: "Who do you think these guys were?"
-
- Alice: "Obviously, I think they were the CIO."
-
- Derek: "Why are you so sure?"
-
- Alice: "Because some of them were carrying the CIO
card, the small one."
-
- There is strong anecdotal evidence that Zimbabwe's shadowy
Central Intelligence Organisation is operating within South African borders,
intimidating Zimbabwean refugees. According to Vanessa and Alice these
CIO agents took them on a nightmare journey during which they were tortured
further. Vanessa had her eyes stabbed with a needle and they were tormented
and humiliated.
-
- At the Zimbabwean border, their luck turned ñ
South African officials wouldn't let them through without a passport. The
CIO men had to abandon them there. It appears that whether it's the CIO,
the police or the youth militia, there is a systematic modus operandi in
the methods of torture used.
-
- Chris: "I think the idea is to impose a certain
amount of psychological damage on their opponents. Thatís why sexual
abuse and other inhumane acts are perpetrated on MDC activists. I think
it is part of a systematic attempt to discourage further activism."
-
- Sadly, for most people the nightmare doesn't end when
the torture stops. Deborah is finding it hard to bond with her baby. She
has had to face the consequences of her rape in more ways than one.
-
- Deborah: "When I went for blood-tests, the doctor
said I was HIV-positive."
-
- Gabriel suffers from clinical depression, nightmares
and impotence. His doctor has prescribed medication, but he cannot afford
to pay for it. Vanessa is still so traumatised by the incident that she
cannot talk about it without breaking down.
-
- Bea: "It is very possible to try and heal the physical
effects of torture. You know the wounds will repair. But at a psychological
level, it is virtually impossible to heal completely."
-
- Derek: "Is Robert Mugabe the real culprit here?"
-
- Chris: "I think he is accountable for a lot of human
rights abuses that have occurred in Zimbabwe. And I think as the head of
state, he must be held accountable."
-
- Recently, leaders like Pinochet and Milosevic have been
tried at international war tribunals and have been held accountable for
human rights abuses during their reign. Many would like to see Mugabe prosecuted
but, if he agrees to step down, a guaranteed amnesty is likely to be part
of the deal.
-
- But Gabriel cannot let the horror of his ordeal rest.
He has explored every avenue available in his quest for justice.
-
- Gabriel: "I think the issue of bringing Mugabe to
book is something not-negotiable. He has a lot of innocent blood on his
hands. I have been in touch with the Accountability Commission for Zimbabwe,
which is an organisation based in London by Zimbabweans. The aim of the
organisation is to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity to book
in the immediate future.
-
- "I have also supplied various other international
organisations with an affidavit and with an account of what transpired
to me.
-
- Derek: "Under what processes could Robert Mugabe
be held accountable?"
-
- Bea: "At the instance of the African Commission
on Human and Peopleís Rights, there is certainly accountability
built into that. I think that the avenues through the African Union and
particularly the peer revue mechanism must be put in place. We have seen
an example in South Africa through the South African Truth Commission,
where civil society, the political structure that came in, mobilised to
create a climate where people can be held accountable."
-
- Vanessa: "Robert Mugabe must go. That is the only
thing, for sure."
-
- Gabriel: "My dream is to meet my family. My dream
is to stay in Mother Zimbabwe. But sadly that dream does not seem to be
realisable at present."
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