Zanu (PF) is paying its thugs Z$10 billion for each member of the MDC who is killed and Z$5 billion for burning down houses of activists. In an exclusive interview with The Zimbabwean on Sunday, a defector from the campaign of terror codenamed Operation Mavhotera Papi, said it had been mounted with the specific approval of the party’s president, Robert Mugabe, against opponents of his regime.
The operation was launched shortly after Mugabe lost the March 29 elections, and is widely seen as the party’s strategy to ensure that a terrified populace votes for Mugabe in the presidential election run-off that has been engineered by the military junta through the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
Henchmen in the pay of the party have been promised payment on a sliding scale, from Z$10 billion for killing an opposition member to Z$5 billion for burning a house.
The defector said young party members were selected by their local branches and sent for seven days of training and indoctrination at the King George VI (KG6) army barracks in Harare.
They are taught assassination skills and paramilitary activities. They are then sent out at night in small squads to kill members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) or burn their houses.
Twenty-one people have died in political violence after the March 29 poll, all of them known to have supported the MDC, according to MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
Operation Mavhotera Papi recruits are sent into action far from their homes so that they will not be recognised or constrained by social or tribal rules. Rewards are offered in the chilling language of a killer accountant.
The Z$10 billion is earned only if the opposition member is murdered “on directive” from the party leadership.
A civil servant qualifies for an initial fee of Z$2 billion if he agrees to spy on fellow employees in the hunt for MDC sympathisers, and gets another Z$2 billion for each person denounced.
Our source called the operation ‘the killing project’. He said he was recruited as a card-carrying Zanu (PF) member and activist. He also spied on people in his village. But after his experiences at KG6, he began to have doubts, and agreed to reveal the organised campaign of atrocities.
He said the ongoing intimidation and murder of MDC supporters had been ordered at a high level and was being directly orchestrated by the Joint Operations Command.
Some of the activities at KG6 were banal. Recruits would chant Zanu (PF) slogans and take breaks for tea and meals of “sadza” (maize porridge) and meat.
Other activities were not. They were shown how to stab someone in the chest and advised to throw their knife in a river or sewerage drain so that it could not be traced. The recruits were also given instructions on burning the homes of opponents.
The army commanders were said to be the speakers at their “graduation” ceremony. Their words left them in no doubt as to their duty.
According to him, they were told in Shona: “When we are speaking of the struggle, we are talking about killing people so the country can be free.” The senior commanders reportedly referred to Zimbabwe’s fight for independence, won in 1980, and added: “Now we are at war again. If one of you is asked why you are killing, you say it is not us, it is the president.”
After instruction during the day, our source said he and other Zanu (PF) recruits carried out several operations at night.
“When we were told to burn a house, six of us got into a pickup truck,” he said. “The driver alone knew the address. One member had a petrol container; the most senior member carried a gun. The rest had knives or clubs. The man with the gun knocked on the door. The rest of us had to surround the house. When the house owners came out, we went in, escorting the petrol-carrier.”
Our source said they doused every room, poured the petrol out to the front gate, and then lit it. He believes he took part in the killing of three MDC members during his stay in Harare, and their bodies were dumped in the Mukuvisi river or in sewers.
They never said the word kill: they used the code “Tsuro Four”, which meant assassinate, he said.
It was one of these operations that led to his return to Mudzi. He and his group were about to dump a body when the victim suddenly jumped up. He slashed at our source’s face and escaped. To compensate for his injury, the Zanu (PF) leadership promised to give him and five friends who had also taken part a diesel-run mill for maize.
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