Opponents of Mugabe tell court of torture

By Celia W. Dugger

Published: January 16, 2009

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JOHNANNESBURG: Jestina Mukoko, a well-known human rights campaigner in Zimbabwe, was forced to kneel on gravel for hours and was beaten on the soles of her feet with rubber truncheons during interrogations, she said in a sworn statement recently submitted to a court in Zimbabwe.

Chris Dhlamini, an aide to the Zimbabwean opposition leader and prime minister in waiting, Morgan Tsvangirai, said in an affidavit that his head was pushed down into a sink full of water until he believed that he would drown.

They are among more than a dozen activists who say they were tortured to obtain false confessions after they were abducted and detained for weeks in secret locations by agents of President Robert Mugabe's government. They are now imprisoned in Harare, the capital, accused of crimes related to acts of sabotage and terrorism against the government.

Mukoko wept on the stand Thursday in a Harare courtroom as she recounted her ordeal. "I was abducted, kidnapped, tortured, assaulted," she testified, The Associated Press reported.

With yet another round of power-sharing talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai scheduled for next week, Tsvangirai demanded Thursday that all those imprisoned on what he called "trumped-up charges" be released before he would consider jointly governing with Mugabe.

Eleven of his party workers are still missing "amidst growing fears for their safety," he said. "Those abducted and illegally detained must be released unconditionally if this agreement is to be consummated," he said at a news conference in Johannesburg.

It was four months ago that Mugabe and Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing agreement that would have ended Mugabe's nearly three decades as unchallenged leader of Zimbabwe, where the economy and public services are now in ruins. Tsvangirai outpolled Mugabe in March elections but dropped out before the June runoff because of state-sponsored attacks on his supporters.

Tsvangirai said he would return to Zimbabwe on Saturday after two months away. And when he and Mugabe meet next week, with current and immediate past presidents of South Africa mediating, he said, he will insist that before a new government is formed, the abducted be freed and legislation be put in place to ensure that he and his party oversee state security forces along with Mugabe and his ruling party, ZANU-PF.

Mugabe's adversaries are even now trying to understand why one of Africa's wiliest, longest-serving leaders deployed his usual agents of repression against opposition activists so soon after he agreed to share power with Tsvangirai.

Does he really believe that his opponents in politics and civil society are using Botswana, whose leaders are his most outspoken critics in the region, as a base to train guerrillas bent on his downfall, despite categorical denials from all those accused?

Certainly that is what Mugabe's allies suggest. Johannes Tomana, recently appointed attorney general by Mugabe, told the state-owned newspaper this week that evidence gathered so far proved that Mukoko, the human rights leader, "is a threat to society and should not be released now."

And State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa refused in an affidavit filed with the court to identify the agents who investigated the activists on grounds of national security.

Mugabe's critics contend that his government cynically fabricated the case against the activists to smear Botswana and weaken his fiercest adversaries. But to what end?

Some in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change believe that Mugabe aims to instill fear in its grass-roots organizers in case the deal fails. Others say Mugabe, who has long used violence to hang onto power, may be trying to bludgeon Tsvangirai into taking a role as a relatively powerless junior partner.

South Africa is pressing Tsvangirai to accept the post of prime minister, while Mugabe stays on as president, and worry later about getting his people out of prison. But many in the opposition now believe that it was a mistake for Tsvangirai to have signed the power-sharing deal in September before nailing down an agreement that his party would control at least one arm of the state security forces, the police.