Zimbabwe: NGO Warns of Rapes Ahead of Poll

With fresh talk of elections being held this year gaining momentum, a nongovernment organisation says the three parties in the shaky government of national unity should ensure that women are protected from politically motivated rapes.

President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF politburo – the party’s supreme decision-making body outside congress – is still insisting that the elections should be held this year without fail.

This is despite advice to the contrary from other parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU), as well as from South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, the SADC-appointed mediator in the Zimbabwean crisis.

While Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party have publicly stated that Mugabe and Zanu-PF would be in violation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) if they rush the polls before the full implementation of an election road map, indications point to elections being held before the end of the year. This has led to fears of resurgence of political violations against women.

In the 2008 bloody presidential polls, in which Tsvangirai beat Mugabe, scores of women suspected to be supporters of the leader of the MDC were subjected to politically motivated rape attributed to Zanu-PF agents provocateurs among the youth militia and war veterans.

Several reports have been produced by civic society organizations chronicling the extent of such rapes before, during and after presidential elections….

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Source: Times Live

NCA calls for SADC to stop political violence and warn perpetrators inside Zimbabwe

As talks of a coming election in Zimbabwe continue NCA pleads leaders from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to act decisively in averting political violence in the country which they blame Mugabe’s party ZANU PF for. At a press conference in Johannesburg on Monday the 18^th of April NCA regional coordinator Munjodzi Mutandiri said that SADC needed to be more proactive in saving human life. He also said that, “Leaders of SADC should take the aspirations of the majority of people seriously”, referring to the 2008 elections where Zimbabwe’s autocratic leader, Robert Mugabe, is believed to have been defeated.

Furthermore, as a part of the campaign Act Now Against Political Violence, The NCA warned Zimbabwean perpetrators of political violence against women and children. According to an NCA press statement they said they were preparing a dossier with information on the perpetrators and would hand it to those in capacity to act and bring justice.

This is supported by the organization Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, which spoke on behalf of a number of civic groups, stating that they were monitoring political violence in Zimbabwe and will present its findings to SADC, “we are closely monitoring Zimbabwe’s political leadership, particularly those in ZANU PF who, de facto, wiled significantly more political power, to ensure that they fully implement SADC troika resolutions, including immediately ending to all forms of violence and intimidation,” read part of the statement by the civics.