Stop Mugabe repeating violence of last poll

DEAR UN leadership.

Following a clear defeat at the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai in 2008, Robert Mugabe withheld the announcement of results while he planned how to rob Zimbabweans of their sweet victory and force himself back on the people.

The strategy involved misrepresenting the results to allow an election rerun because, under Zimbabwean law, the winning candidate in a presidential election has to win by more than 50% of the vote.

He then hired some Zanu-PF youth, paid from the government payroll, to kill targeted Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) campaigners and unleash violence on the electorate in order to instil fear so that they voted for him.

True in deed, hundreds of MDC campaigners were killed; some were abducted from their workplaces in broad daylight. It was chaos.

It’s sad that Mugabe announced on Saturday during his rally in Chinhoyi that the youth, who had been made redundant, should be reinstated. They had been made redundant when revenue declined coupled with the fact that the youth don’t do any productive work.

Mugabe pretended to distance himself from the violent youth behaviour at a rally in Lupane two weeks ago, yet the people he was blaming are the same ones who will be reinstated to murder opposition supporters in the run-up to next year’s election.

The UN and the AU mustn’t be fooled by Mugabe’s antics and should tackle him about the violence. Don’t leave it until it is too late to save innocent Zimbabweans’ lives.

He instilled fear so that they voted for him

Wellington New Zealand Region