Mike, Angela and Ben were taken by a “war vet” named Gilbert Moyo and approximately twenty thugs to Pixton Mine (Pixton Mine is currently being used as a youth militia torture camp). Implicated in the attack is a Zanu PF party member named ‘Mazambani’ and an army General.

Cold water was thrown over them before all were beaten.

Mike Campbell, who is 74 years old, was beaten with rifle butts. Mike has serious concussion and a broken collar bone and fingers.

Mike’s wife Angela (70) was thrown to the ground by the abductors resulting in a double fracture of her arm/shoulder, requiring surgery. One of the militia took burning twigs from the fire and put them on her lips.

Ben Freeth, their son in law, was also beaten with rifle butts. He has a badly swollen and totally closed eye. His feet were severely beaten. Beating people on the soles of their feet is a form of torture that is widespread in Zimbabwe and is known as “falanga”.  Falanga can leave a victim permanently unable to walk normally.

The motivation for the attack is tied to the farmers’ engagement in a SADC tribunal challanging the Zanu PF regime’s efforst to compulsoraly take their farms.

Mike and Ben are the architects and at the forefront of the SADC Tribunal litigation. Fourteen farmers in the Kadoma/Chegutu farming community spearheaded the joinder applications with the Campbell Mount Carmel case in SADC.

They were viciously beaten and tortured until they agreed, under extreme duress, to sign a formal withdrawal of the Campbell Case from the SADC Tribunal.

The case is due to be heard in Windhoek from 16th July onwards.

We are so grateful the Campbells are alive and have been found. It must be kept in mind that thousands of Zimbabweans have been abducted and their whereabouts and their safety is still unknown.

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Via a ZCTU Press Release:

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has learnt with dismay the harassment of labour leaders during the Presidential Run Off by ruling party militia, supporters and State security agents. The current information we have is:

1. The ZCTU district chairperson for Chivhu, Tinashe Murau, was seriously beaten up by Zanu PF militia just before the 27 June Presidential Runoff and has had his hand broken and is currently seeking medical attention. He was beaten after the militia questioned why he wears ZCTU t-shirts and attends ZCTU meetings.

(more…)

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Africa’s top security body discusses Zimbabwe crisis (AFP)
The 15-member African Union’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) held closed-door talks on the crisis in Zimbabwe on Sunday. The African Union (AU) summit is taking place at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. There has been much disagreement amongst the 54 member states of the AU as to what course of action should be taken with regard to the political crisis in Zimbabwe. Mugabe, sworn in for another term, will be attending the AU summit. The outcome of the PSC meeting would in all probability determine the kind of reception Mugabe will receive on his arrival. In an apparent effort to appease regional leaders, Mugabe called for “serious dialogue” between the political parties in Zimbabwe and heaped praise on his staunch ally, South African President Thabo Mbeki.

China balks at US calls for Zimbabwe arms embargo (AFP)
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that it was time for strong international action to stop the political violence in Zimbabwe. Rice took part in discussions with her Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Beijing, China. The US is planning to introduce measures against Robert Mugabe at a UN Security Council meeting this week. Measures would include an arms embargo and a travel ban on Robert Mugabe. China has however proved to be reluctant in lending support to the suggested measures. Jiechi would only say that, “The most pressing task now is to stabilise the situation in Zimbabwe,” said Yang, the Chinese foreign minister. (more…)

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Update from this morning

Mike, Angela and Ben were dumped in Kadoma at around 01h30 this morning.

This update was from last night - a forwarded email

Police at Chegutu have now provided six armed personnel after receiving instructions from PROPOL (Provincial Police Officer. They have attended on Stockdale and cannot locate the Campbells and Freeth. The police and Bruce Campbell have been out to Bronkhorst’s whose farm was looted. The maid at Bronkhorst confirmed seeing the Campbells and Freeth badly beaten up. They were in the back of a red pick up truck. The satellite device to track Mike Campbell’s Prado is not functioning.

(more…)

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Find, at the end of this post, links to the preliminary statements by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Pan-African Parliament (PAP) Election Observer Missions (EOM) to Zimbabwe. We’ve provided a snapshot of some of what they said below, but you must download and read the statements for the full details.

SADC EOM:

“There was a low turnout during the runoff compared to the 29 March 2008 harmonised elections”

“The pre-election phase was characterised by politically motivated violence, intimidation, and displacements.

(more…)

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We have spent the weekend anxiously waiting for people NOT to vote. So different and so bizarre, because for the past eight years we have agonised over low voter turnout. Now we got low voter turnout, and check out the figures ZEC has come up with! Anyone want the job to be the ZEC acturial scientist?: its up for grabs, because you only have to be “smarter than a fifth grader” to qualify. (more…)

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On March 29th 2008, Robert Mugabe polled total votes of 1,079,730. Somehow, despite mass intimidation, gross violence, increasing poverty, murders, and hyper-inflation, Robert Mugabe’s popularity accelerated faster than our inflation figures (which is quite something) and he managed to secure himself an extra 1,070,539 votes on 27 June 2008. He has effectively doubled his vote.

Do not forget that Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from this poll and a call to boycott the elections was circulated and supported in many areas (see Sokwanele round-ups on the day of the polls here and here). The Pan African Parliamentary observers  have independently also confirmed an extremely low turnout, but this is not reflected in the turnout figures below.

There are two rows per province in the table; the yellow highlighed row shows the results for March 29th 2008, excluding the other two candidates who competed on that day. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) have not released the results on a constituency basis so we cannot make detailed comparisons.

* This 100% figure includes the other Presidential candidates who competed on March 29th 2008.

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Election results are being announced province by province - no constituency level  detail - obviously to hide the humiliating detail and prevent analysis. 8 provinces in so far and I can tell you right now that the results are a complete and utter joke. Staggeringly farcical. We’ll bring them to you as soon as we have them all, and send out on Twitter as well.

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The news on the BBC ticker now is that Morgan Tsvangirai has been invited to witness Robert Mugabe’s inauguration following a poll where Mugabe competed against himself. “They think it’s hilarious”, my friend said to me when I told him. “They think they are so clever and that they have outwitted the world. It’s just one big massive joke to them”.

When I was told this was crawling accross the BBC’s website my first reaction was “You are joking!”

It’s the second time today that I’ve been almost knocked over by disbelief: the first was when I read that Robert Mugabe had stood up at his wife’s grandmother’s funeral yesterday and said,

You would not imagine that in Harare, where we had been beaten in all but one constituency in the March elections, this time around not even one went to the MDC.

(more…)

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Results from Ward 18 - Chiredzi West show a complete reversal of the outcome on March 29th. Unfortunately we don’t have the spoilt ballot numbers yet.

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Waiting is a way of life in Zimbabwe.

I’ve been watching and waiting for over 36 hours for the official announcement of Zimbabwe’s just-ended one-horse-race – the Run-off of the Presidential election. I don’t normally watch zanu-pf’s brand of national television programming, but have had to do so in order to see the official Election results. It is a cross between good AIDS-awareness adverts/programs and bad pro-zanu-pf propaganda. Of it all, what sticks in my mind are the words of the one advert “Imagine the possibility of an AIDS-free generation – it starts with you!”.

So what is that to the world? Nothing on the face of it, but if we look deeper at the situation in Zimbabwe, the latest tragedy unfolds. Outplayed, out-manouevered or just plain outclassed in the game of political genocide, the peaceful people of Zimbabwe stand stunned by the sheer brazenness of their murderous President-to-be. The majority of the populace has just ‘lost’ the latest round of manipulated and rigged elections to him and his political minority.

With the ability to shed political skins like a snake – one minute a venomous cobra sending waves of paid thugs to kill and mutilate defenceless villagers, the next a concerned and devoted family man and icon for the nation – he strides defiantly from the jaws of defeat once more.

One would expect him to rest – to recouperate from an election campaign in which he had to dig to the bottom of his dirty tricks bag for the most horrific forms of murder, shamelessly brutal violence and ballot-rigging to snatch a bloody victory from the people.

No – not our President-elect to-be will not rest! He is to be enthroned within 48 hours of the close of polling, then he is off to a Summit of the African Union in Cairo.

What of that? Having been publicly criticised by some members of the AU, he is now wearing his anti-colonial, anti-western, chameleon-skin cloak, to strut his stuff in front of his African peers. This cloak is well-known in Africa. It can make a mass-murderer look like a choir-boy. That - together with his legendary eloquence which allows him to turn mesmerising lies into the “truth” – he will be attempting to persuade his peers that not only does he speak for the people of Zimbabwe (by right of conquest) but that he should be allowed to pervert the course of Africa’s re-birth as a continent of self-reliant sovereign states. His stance is that he is leading the people of the continent in the struggle to free them from colonialist and capitalist western oppression and exploitation.

What he won’t be telling them is how he equates murdering the people of Zimbabwe - and stealing the wealth of the nation - with giving the people of Africa freedom from anything! What he won’t be explaining is how an oppressive African dictator is better than an honest, patriotic, democratic African leader!

Will he succeed in this crusade? Will men of high political stature – astute and well-seasoned African politicians – allow themselves to be manipulated, mesmerised, bullied and cajoled into uniting behind the one-way walls of dictatorship? Will they stand by their principles and the rights of the people of the people of Africa?

We have hope! We have recently seen and heard African leaders of integrity refusing to accept the actions of Mugabe and his supporters.

Stand fast and pray, people of Africa! Imagine the possibility of a dictator-free generation. It starts with you!

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In an an attempt to cow and intimidate people into voting, Zimbabwe’s state security agents yesterday launched “Operation Red Finger” to identify if people had voted by checking if they had indelible ink-stains on their finger. Those who had not voted could be beaten and forced to do so.

This was sent to us by Chaz Maviyane Davis. Visit his Creative Defiance site here.

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Violence and Mbeki only remaining pillars for Mugabe: MDC (SWRadio)
The MDC said that Mugabe has only two remaining pillars of support which is, Mugabe’s violent campaign and South African President Thabo Mbeki’s reluctance to condemn Mugabe’s terror campaign and his failure to halt the discredited run-off poll. Nelson Chamisa spokesperson for the MDC said that the poll was an insult to Zimbabweans. Chamisa said, “You should have representatives, competition, accountability and observation. All these ingredients were not there.”

Vote counting complete in Zimbabwe poll-ZEC (Reuters)
Vote counting in Zimbabwe’s presidential election has finished, the country’s electoral commission said on Saturday.

“That process has been completed,” Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Deputy Chief Elections Officer Utoile Silaigwana said on state television. It was hoped collation and verification of results would be finished on Saturday and then the results could be released, he said. (more…)

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Feels familiar. Here’s the link to the BBC.

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Via the AFP:

Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe, certain of victory following a one-man election, is expected to be inaugurated for a new term as president on Sunday, government sources told AFP.

The rapid swearing-in following Friday’s run-off vote contrasts sharply with the five-week delay in releasing results from the first round of the presidential election on March 29.

“The inauguration is tomorrow (Sunday) at 10 am (0800 GMT),” said one source close to Mugabe.

(more…)

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