HARARE – Barely every week after being elected as an area councilor for Zimbabwe’s fundamental opposition occasion, Womberaiishe Nhende and a relative had been pulled out of their automobile by unidentified males, shot with a stun gun and handcuffed.

They had been then bundled right into a pickup truck and pushed about 70 kilometers (greater than 40 miles) exterior of Harare, the capital, the place they had been whipped, overwhelmed with truncheons and interrogated, and injected with an unknown substance, their Legal Professionals say.

Having been questioned over what their Residents Coalition for Change occasion is planning after August’s disputed and troubled nationwide Election, the ordeal ended when the 2 males had been dumped bare close to a river, the legal professionals allege.

Their story is not new within the southern African nation, which has a protracted historical past of violence and intimidation towards opposition to the ZANU-PF occasion throughout its 43-year rule.

There are indicators that the nation has now slipped into one other period of brutal oppression, whilst newly reelected President Emmerson Mnangagwa speaks publicly of “peace, love, harmony and tolerance.”

Behind those sweet words, more than a dozen opposition CCC figures — from elected representatives to officials and activists — have been been Arrested by police in the three weeks since the election, the party says. Others have been targeted with violent abductions.

“It is the beginning of a new term and we are seeing people being abducted and tortured, people’s homes being burnt down, and lawyers arrested for simply doing their job,” mentioned Doug Coltart, one in all Nhende’s legal professionals, who was himself arrested.

“It only creates the impression that we are going to see further breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe.”

Mnangagwa, a former guerrilla fighter known as “the crocodile,” won a second term as president last month in an election rejected by the CCC as flawed and questioned by international and regional observers, who cited numerous problems, including a climate of fear and intimidation.

That appears to still be a mainstay in Zimbabwe six years after renowned autocratic leader Robert Mugabe was ousted in a coup and replaced by Mnangagwa in 2017.

Coltart and another of Nhende’s lawyers, Tapiwa Muchineripi, were detained and charged with obstructing justice for telling police that they couldn’t question Nhende and relative Sanele Mkuhlani over their beatings while they were sedated, they said. Coltart isn’t new to harassment, having been arrested by authorities for doing his job at least four times before, but he said the latest crackdown so soon after the elections doesn’t “bode nicely for the subsequent section.”

Mnangagwa and his occasion have repeatedly denied allegations of utilizing repression to crush dissent. But the president, who turned 81 on Friday, described the opposition’s allegations as “noises from some little boys” and threatened to imprison “anybody who wants to be nonsensical and bring chaos.”

Mnangagwa’s often-repeated assertion that Zimbabwe is a mature democracy underneath him is seen as a facade by many, together with outstanding worldwide rights teams like Amnesty Worldwide and Human Rights Watch. A more true image of Zimbabwean politics is likely to be the deep crimson and black welts and rips within the pores and skin seen throughout Nhende’s again and decrease legs, the results of a lashing with a heavy sjambok whip, his legal professionals mentioned.

Nhende recounted his expertise and confirmed his wounds in a video launched by the CCC, the closest challenger to ZANU-PF within the election.

“They beat us up trying to extract information about our post-election plans,” Nhende mentioned within the video, throughout which he winces in ache as he speaks.

The sight of an elected consultant displaying accidents from a beating is not unusual in Zimbabwe.

Greater than 15 years in the past, then-opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai was photographed by the world’s media with a swollen and badly bruised face, one eye utterly closed, after having been detained by police in the course of the Mugabe period and severely overwhelmed.

It seems little has modified in a rustic that provides unrealized potential for Africa, given its wealthy agricultural land, mineral sources that embody the continent’s largest lithium deposits, and potential oil and fuel finds.

Police introduced a brand new bout of arrests of opposition figures final week — together with a newly elected CCC lawmaker, on expenses of tried homicide and malicious injury to property in the course of the election. The CCC says two of its lawmakers have not too long ago been arrested. Different representatives had been reelected final month whereas in detention.

Social gathering spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi has left the nation after police mentioned they had been searching for to arrest him for failing to attend a court docket listening to in 2019, and charged him with assault and injury to property. CCC deputy spokesperson Reward Siziba was arrested on expenses of inciting violence at a soccer sport.

Amnesty has raised the case of one other CCC activist, who it says was kidnapped and tortured within the days after the election.

The CCC and analysts say there’s a clear post-election clampdown now that the worldwide observers have left.

“All this post-election repression is to suffocate the opposition,” Zimbabwean political commentator Rashweat Mukundu mentioned. “What we are seeing now is an indication that there has been no reform. Elections have failed to resolve the governance issues in Zimbabwe, so the repression is a pattern that is likely to persist until the next elections.”

After visiting Nhende and Mkuhlani in the hospital, CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, who lost to Mnangangwa in the presidential election, said that his party was under siege and facing a backlash.

“After freedom of choice, you don’t expect torture,” Chamisa said. “It was a sham election, a disputed election, a flawed election. But beyond that, you torture people for what reason?”

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AP Africa information: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

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