Mapped: 2094 cases of political violence in Zimbabwe

Last week the BBC had a report that groups of MDC supporters returning from South Africa were carrying out reprisal attacks against Zanu PF war veterans who had beaten up their relatives. The link to the piece was emailed to us by a few people with different messages ranging from “It’s about time someone did this”, to “I hope Sokwanele will condemn this as much as you do Zanu PF-led violence”.

The incidents, close to Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa, followed accusations of torture and arson attacks by war veterans.

Youths loyal to the opposition have now launched retaliatory attacks against the veterans.

Sokwanele campaigns for non violence, and that includes all forms of violence so we condemn these sort of actions completely.

I delayed my response to this because we’ve been adding more violence data to our map and I wanted to see if this latest sample included violence against civilians perpetrated by MDC supporters. It does: out of the total of 2094 cases mapped so far, there are four cases in Harare denoted by four bright pink map pins. These were not, as you might imagine, all MDC reprisal attacks against Zanu PF thugs - three of them are cases arising out of infighting between the two MDC formations and only one was of a Zanu PF supporter who came forward to report his experience at the hands of an MDC supporter.

Our political violence map reflects cases of violence and terror regardless of who is responsible: each pin is a victim. To date, our sample - and it is a sample - has seen little evidence that the opposition parties are attacking Zanu PF supporters. Solidarity Peace Trust’s latest report says that in the sample cases they used for their report, only 1% of the victims were Zanu PF supporters.

Because of the way we have mapped the data (recording confirmed testimony from victims) the picture sometimes doesn’t quite tell the whole story. For example, the colour-coded pins identify perpetrators of the crimes - ours is a map of accountability. In the few cases where Zanu PF supporters have been attacked, we have recorded who attacked them and not the fact that they are ‘Zanu PF-supporting’ victims. I am personally unmoved whether a victim is MDC or Zanu PF because no one deserves to be criminally assaulted,  and especially not because they exercise a democratic right to support a party of their choice.

What is significant in these cases is that the criminals have mostly been Zanu PF aligned, all organised by the State. What we hope the map will do is show the level of organisation and coordination and clearly identify who is responsible for the crimes.

There is another story not quite fully revealed on our map that appeared in our most recent batch of data, and this has to do with reprisal attacks.

A group of MDC youths in an area of Zimbabwe took it upon themselves to beat up Zanu PF thugs who had been responsible for a particularly vicious crime against an MDC supporter in their community. The angry youths went on a rampage and also destroyed the property of the Zanu PF thugs.

However, the reason why these youths ended up in our sample is not because they perpetrated crimes, but because they ended up being victims again as a result of them. Unsurprisingly, the Zanu PF youths counter-retaliated, this time backed up by the local police and militia, and the MDC supporting vigilantes had to flee for their lives. They continue to live in fear, unable to go home, everything they own has been destroyed and death threats have been issued against them. Our map records victims and identifies who attacked them, so each of these youths is now a map pin recording that they have been displaced, their property destroyed and that their lives have been threatened. The map shows that that their persecutors are Zanu PF aligned.

Would we map the victims that the MDC supporters attacked and would we identify that they were attacked by MDC youths? Absolutely, but these individuals have not reported their experience to the people who feed the confirmed cases our way. If they did, they would be treated fairly and reasonably and their experiences would be mapped by us. We can’t map them despite knowing that something happened to them because we don’t know how many were beaten, exactly what happened to them, or where it all took place.

To be clear for those who assume that Sokwanele deliberately does not map incidents of violence against Zanu PF, this group of cases that we cannot map, refering to actions against Zanu PF supporters, is among the first we have seen where violence against a Zanu PF supporter has been mentioned (out of the 2094 cases now on our map). I can think of only one other case (from Manicaland) where an individual had to flee death threats because, like the MDC in this case, he had attacked a Zanu PF supporter.

So why don’t the Zanu PF cases end up coming our way? It’s hard to say, but my interpretation is that they possibly do not consider themselves in the same light as the MDC people who have been beaten by Zanu PF thugs to an inch of their lives. Unlike the MDC victims, whose pictures we have seen and stories we have read, the Zanu PF victims of this case of MDC-led violence had alternative ‘options’. They didn’t need to resort to last desperate measures by appealing for help because they had nothing left at all and because no one else would help them and they had nowhere to go.

The Zanu PF victims used their other options and turned to the police and the militia who rallied around and chased away their persecutors. Yes, they have lost their property, but we know that the militia are given free reign when it comes to looting property. It wouldn’t be surprising at all if the Zanu victims recouped their losses by taking it from an MDC ‘enemy’ neighbour close by, possibly adding a few good whacks for good measure. We know the police will do nothing.

It is this bizarre case of knowing violence we can’t map, where ‘victims‘ became ‘violent vigilantes‘ only to be forced even deeper into ‘victimhood‘ as a result, that underscores why reprisal attacks simply don’t work.

Who won in this instance?

As for the comunity left behind after this spate of vigilantiasm, what’s to become of them? I can’t imagine there won’t be further reprisal attacks and that they won’t be drawn into a widening vortex of violence.

Will they be the next set of map pins on our map? Will their testimony read “Zanu thugs beat us and stole our property as punishment because MDC people took vengeance on them“? We can’t say at this stage, but given what we know about Zanu PF and retaliatory violence, it is not an implausible possiblity at all.

Share This