Amnesty is encouraging supporters to write to Zimbabwean authorities urging them to ensure Mawarire’s safety and wellbeing, reminding them states have an obligation to prevent abuses against human rights defenders and asking them “to end the harassment, arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention of human rights defenders and activists and perceived opponents of the ruling party ZANU-PF”.
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Zimbabwe’s former fighters had also called for Mugabe to give way to his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa.
He added: “The brutal attack on the leadership of the authentic Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association is an insult to all genuine liberators of our motherland”.
Standing next to his wife Grace, who has amassed extraordinary political power, Mugabe, made his first public appearance on Wednesday since war veterans said it was time for him to go.
“The punishment will be severe”, Mugabe said in a speech Wednesday to supporters outside the headquarters of the ruling ZANU-PF party. For many observers, it was a chilling reminder of the 1980s ethnic conflict between the government army and the armed wing of ZAPU which, together with Zanu PF, fought to liberate Zimbabwe. In the letter to Mugabe dated 27 July 2016, the youths said they were calling on him to heed their invitation as non-political individuals whom he had led for more than three decades.
The members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) executive had said earlier they would stay away from Wednesday’s rally.
Mugabe said he wanted the war veterans to select a new leadership, claiming that Western countries have infiltrated it.
“As long as the party says continue, I continue…”
Had everything been well, as Mugabe and Zanu PF would want us to believe, then there would be no need for marches and rallies in solidarity with the clearly beleaguered President.
Hove said Mugabe should listen to the people instead of trying to silence them from airing their grievances.
Ms Todd, who was has written about how she was subjected to a punishment rape by the Mugabe regime in the mid-1980s after she criticised the Mugabe-backed terror campaign in Matabeleland, was stripped of her citizenship by Mr Mugabe in 2003 over her activism. “We will retain him but they will have no one to vote them (VPs) as they depend on being appointed by the president”, Chimene said.
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The MDC said it knew that Mugabe would use today’s meeting to strengthen “his divide and rule tactics” to create a factional divide within the war veterans’ body.
