Source: ZPP report exposes Zanu PF violence – NewsDay Zimbabwe
BY PRIVELEDGE GUMBODETE
THE Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) has exposed Zanu PF for perpetrating the majority of human rights abuses across the country in the month of April.
The report titled The Wall talks of the existence of Zanu PF torture camps set up in rural areas to crush dissent.
“President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF party was responsible for the majority of human rights violations across the country. ZPP recorded 165 incidents in which the ruling party was responsible.
“In the majority of these incidents, Zanu PF supporters were hounding people they suspected had supported the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) in the run-up to the March 26 by-elections,” ZPP said in the report.
“ZPP can confirm the existence of Zanu PF structures meant to intimidate and silence people in rural areas ahead of the 2023 elections and this is more prevalent in Mashonaland East, Central and West provinces, where the organisation has recorded a combined 77 cases.
According to the report, in Murehwa North, Zanu PF councillor Masimba Gumira gathered villagers to celebrate his victory in the March 26 by-elections. He then allegedly ordered the punishing of anyone seen wearing yellow which is a CCC party colour. He also reportedly issued death threats on people who wanted to dump the ruling party.
Zanu PF director of information Tafadzwa Mugwadi dismissed the report saying: “We don’t respond to lies deliberately cooked by desperate donor-driven outfits led by laptop activists such as Jestina Mukoko. Who needs schooling on what ZPP and its scandalous activists stand for in Zimbabwe’s political market? Zanu PF actually holds ZPP and Jestina Mukoko responsible for the sporadic needless orgies of violence that she hatches working with paid opposition activists targeting security officers, government buildings, businesses and individual citizens.
“In the process, she develops a basis for writing a funding proposal. Mukoko’s survival strategy is well-known and exposed and no amount of preposterous publications can save her nudity. The revolutionary party is aware of a number of her rented properties which she uses as nursery beds for organising violent protests disguised as safe houses. To the contrary, Zanu PF as an organisation is a party of peace-loving doves, no wonder our motto is ‘unity, peace and development.’”