'We are not free at all' - Zimbabweans on Independence Day

Apr 18, 2008, 18:45 GMT

A Zimbabwe soldier stands next to a sign during the Zimbabwe Independence Day celebrations in Harare, Zimbabwe, 18 April 2008. As Zimbabwe marks it\'s 28 years of independence, the nation still waits for official election results three weeks after the recent Presidential elections. EPA/STR

Harare/Johannesburg - President Robert Mugabe used his country's independence celebrations speech to attack his perennial enemies - the former colonial power Britain and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

But while the elderly leader was pledging to uphold Zimbabwe's independence the West some people were nursing wounds sustained for exercising a right Mugabe and his fellow liberation struggle comrades had fought so hard for: the right to vote for their preferred leader.

'Independence celebrations are meaningless,' said Matthew Takaona, president of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, who was bruised after being beaten by soldiers in a town on the edge of Harare called Chitungwiza a day earlier.

Zimbabwe is on a knife edge over the nearly three-week wait for results of last month's presidential elections, in which opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai claims to have ended Mugabe's 28-year rule.

Tsvangirai claims he won the election outright. Mugabe's party says neither he nor Tsvangirai won decisively and that a runoff will be needed. The MDC won the parliamentary vote.

The state-controlled Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has withheld the results, while at the same time announcing a partial recount for Saturday.

In a by now familiar pattern of retribution against the population, soldiers entered a bar where Takaona was drinking with friends and beat the patrons for daring to 'enjoy themselves' after 'voting wrongly' in the March 29 election.

The MDC claims four of its members have been killed in such attacks. The Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights say they have treated scores of people for injuries sustained in post-election violence.

'What independence is there when the security forces who are supposed to protect you - when you see them you run away? We are not free at all,' Takaona asked. 'We still have to be liberated in actual terms - economically and politically.'

As Independence Day dawned the attacks continued. About 30 soldiers travelling in two unregistered army trucks rounded up young men in the low-income Harare suburb of Glen View Friday morning and took turns beating them.

According to bystanders the victims' offence had been to 'provoke a soldier.'

'They think we will forget our results. We want election results,' Hilda Garwe said. Garwe's brother in Mutoko (about 200 kilometres from Harare) was beaten up by youth militia for urging people to vote for the MDC.

But Mugabe on Friday gave the delayed results and the international opprobium it has caused little shrift, accusing Britain of using cash to turn people away from him and warning Zimbabwe would 'never be a colony again.'

His nationalist rhetoric got cheers from his 15,000-strong audience in Gwanzuru stadium of mostly children, uniformed soldiers and people shepherded there by youth militia.

But his critics worried that this was not the speech of a president on the ropes.

'It seems he wants to stay in power,' said Lovemore Madhuku, head of the National Constitutional Assembly civil society umbrella group.

'You could tell even from the way he was using hate speech against whites. On television or radio it is the same, we see very disturbing images of dead bodies, war or disturbing songs and speeches.'

Over the past few weeks state-owned television and radio stations have been playing 'political' songs and speeches to invoke memories of the 1970s liberation war.

One of the songs, 'Mr Government' by Man Soul Jah, a supporter of Mugabe's Zanu-PF, celebrates the government's seizures of white-owned farms and calls for killing of perceived political sell-outs.

The song speaks of people living like squatters in the land of their homeland and asking for spears so that they can kill the 'sellouts' in their forefathers' country.