impossible for the meeting to proceed. Some accusations and other threats were also issued as
organisers were accused of having ulterior motives.
Intra-party conflict was also recorded in April in Zanu-PF, ZimPF and in MDC-T, with the
ruling party and the opposition party recording six instances of intra-party conflict compared
to one instance in the Zimbabwe People First.
Disrupted meetings were quite common in April where the main victims were ZimPF, where
Zanu-PF youths would come and disrupt their meetings despite that the meetings would have
been cleared by the police. Examples of disrupted ZimPF meetings include one in Redcliff
and another in Mutoko, among a few others.
National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) consultative meetings were
conducted in some areas across the country and were resoundingly met with criticism
wherein one of the major concerns was the proposed NPRC Bill gave the minister too much
power. In some instances Zanu-PF members disrupted these meetings. The Parliamentary
Legal Committee issued an adverse report on the NPRC Bill with some of the issues being
buttressed in the public hearings which failed to cover all parts of the country. (See ZPP
Statement on the NPRC on page 29).
By and large most of the instances of violations showed that the fear of being labelled a sellout is quite common amongst ordinary citizens and threats of such a label being plastered on
them is enough to make people comply, however unwillingly.
Surveillance of who has attended what opposition meetings is another practice which is
curtailing freedom of association amongst the general populace.
Across the board, the different fears for people include being discriminated against when it
comes to food distributions; and also fear of being “dealt with” come 2018. It would
appear that the ruling party continues to try to hold citizens with other political affiliations
hostage.
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