Zimbabwe on course for slaughter, and war

Death squads, snipers recruited to kill or maim key opposition party officials

In the same way that Mugabe lay low during the days immediately after the election, allowing post-election hype to fizzle, so too has attention waned that was once sharply focused on a ship: the An Yue Jiang. The Chinese ship carrying arms (including Ak-47 rifles and 3 million rounds of ammunition) for Zimbabwe was widely reported to have left the South African port of Durban en route back to China, with no weapons delivered.

In fact the ship emerged on April 25 along the West Coast of Africa at the Angolan port of Luanda. While the Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos promised to allow no offloading of arms, this ignores a military agreement that has been in place between Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe for at least a decade. In South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper it is reported that Mugabe’s right-hand man and other security officials delivered a “special message” to the Angolan president during the last few days.

The Mail & Guardian also speculates that a Chinese air cargo company, MK Air flight ‘lodged a suspicious flying plan from Luanda that might have allowed it time to divert to Zimbabwe.’ The flight between Launda and Entebbe (in Uganda) did not appear for 17 hours on radar.

Subsequently, reports have been filtering in of death squads roaming Zimbabwe, and ‘picking off’ key opposition members. Alarmingly the opposition party in Zimbabwe, the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) also released a statement referring to the mobilization of a group of eighteen "snipers"who they said had been allocated nearly a dozen Hilux twin-cab vehicles in Chikurubi, Harare. The MDC even went so far as to provide license plate numbers for these vehicles.

Zimbabwe’s local newspaper The Standard has reported numerous MDC related murders in rural areas. The MDC believe at least 20 of their activists have been killed. Given the unfolding events, and the tacit approval to date by the South African government (including opposing a UN-backed delegation to Zimbabwe), massive bloodletting is likely to gain momentum in the coming weeks. Incredibly, with the country experiencing what can only be described as ‘death throes’, Zimbabwe’s dictator means to wrest power and maintain his chokehold of power until the last gasp.