in January. Of the harassment and intimidation cases, an evolving trend
could be observed where ruling party politicians and supporters,
including traditional leaders, were forcing registered voters to
surrender their voter registration information to party officials. While
the motive is still unclear, the practice had an intimidating effect,
especially on opposition or perceived opposition supporters.
Discrimination cases on the other hand largely came in the form
of the partisan distribution of government aid, in particular agricultural
inputs and food aid. Most of the aid was being distributed to ruling party
supporters to the exclusion of opposition or perceived opposition
members or supporters. Commendably though, cases of outright
violence were by comparison significantly lower with only 6 cases
recorded. The cases were largely interparty skirmishes between Zanu
PF and MDC-T supporters and intraparty squabbling within Zanu PF as
part of the continued G40 purge.
By location, Manicaland province had the highest number of
violations with 62 cases, followed by Mashonaland Central with 60, and
Masvingo with 38.
In terms of the victims, the majority were of unknown political
affiliation, with a very small percentage (3.2% MDC-T and 2.5% Zanu
PF) being politically identifiable.
Zanu PF was accused as the main perpetrator, accounting for
85.8% of the violations, followed by the Zimbabwe Republic Police at
5.3%, the War Veterans at 0.7%, the MDC-T at 0.2%, and the
Zimbabwe National Army at 0.2%. Most of the violations by Zanu PF
were at a local level and were spearheaded by local party leaders at
district or lower levels. A few times, sitting or aspiring Members of
Parliament were also implicated. Chiefs and local headmen on the other
hand were heavily implicated in cases of discrimination, harassment and
intimidation. Notably, the violations by the state agents (the ZRP and
the ZNA) were primarily of a non-political nature. Rather, they were of
a civil nature and mainly related to the maintenance of law and order.
By gender, there were more male victims (1575) than female
victims (1471) and more male perpetrators (465) than female
perpetrators (100).
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