Presidential Runoff

Today the Presidential Runoff is taking place. Leading up to it has been a very difficult time, especially for the poor and most vulnerable people of Zimbabwe. People in the Rural areas and those in the townships have suffered much under state sponsored terror. In Hatcliffe the Zanu PF militia have been ruling supreme for the past month. All trade and commerce is being controlled by the militia. Buses are having to offload people about a kilometre outside the township in order to avoid the "toll" that they are being charged for entering the occupied territories. Street vendors have to pay a fee in order to continue trading and they have to wear Zanu PF campaign regalia in order to be spared harrassment. Most motorists have been cowed into displaying campaign regalia on their cars to be granted passage in some of Harare's occupied territories. Pedestrians have no option but to carry at least some item that identifies them with the ruling party in order to move with some modicum of freedom through Harare. At the shops, ruling party functionaries are controlling access to bread and other basic commodities. They buy all the stock out of the shop for $800 million a loaf and and resell it to the desperate public on the very presincts of the shop for anything between 3 and 5 billion dollars a loaf. There is no maize-meal for making sadza entering Hatcliffe, supplies from Domboshawa are being either blocked or confisticated. Supplies from NGOs and churches were stopped almost a month ago now. People are famishing as I write. Yet the ruling party militia are going door to door demanding food from the people for them to eat at the infamous base that they have set up in the township. In Hatcliffe Extension, where the people are poorest and most defenseless, the militia are demanding a bucket of maize-meal per family and amounts of money varying between 5 and 10 billion for their upkeep. The people of Hatcliffe have no option, no recourse, and have to simlpy surrender their hard earned supplies. An operation to bar the people from watching international news via satelite was carried out last week in Hatcliffe, as in other parts of Harare and the country. In some places the satelite dishes and decorders were confisticated. Those who were fortunate were able to dismantle the equipment themselves and hide it. The sheer injustice of this whole campaign is in its target on the poor and defenceless. In the neighbouring well-to-do surbub of Borrowdale, there is none of this molestation. In Hatcliffe they can do absolutely what they want to the people and they get away with it, in broad daylight. But in Borrowdale and its neighbouring well-to-do areas, they would not even dare. The police are always present when the people are being harrassed and all they can do is watch. Apparently the militia are led by members of the national army in civilian clothes and the so called Border Gezi youth. I have been told by police officers, their frustation and indigantion, having been given orders from above not to interfere with the ruling party militia. Those officers who have defied these instructions have either been moved to other posts or simply dismissed. I had to get a police escort on Sunday as I accompanied children of the parish from theirn St Alois celebration. The policeman was more afraid of the militia than I was. A greater threat of violence looms over the people after the runoff election. People have been told who to vote for and the consequences for not doing so. If they go to vote today it is simply because they are afraid and they want to avoid the repression that is sure to follow.