Mugabe nears the end.
Mugabe is stepping up his attacks on MDC supporters in a desperate last attempt to hold on to power that appears to be slipping away from him for the first time in 27 years. Opposition supporters are not only being beaten, but they are being branded to make them more easily identifiable in future.
Mugabe's henchmen have carried out more than 100 documented attacks in the past two weeks alone as he attempts to put down an opposition who show no signs of cowing in front of his brutality.
Despite this orgy of violence against them, opposition leaders went ahead yesterday with a memorial service for Gift Tandare, an activist shot as he left a prayer meeting. It was only a memorial service because Mugabe had kidnapped the dead boy's body in order to prevent a funeral service from taking place, lest this unite opposition forces."They didn't ask anything," says Jonathan. "They just said you are MDC and we are going to beat you until you die."
The last thing he remembers before losing consciousness was being marked.
"I don't know what it was. It was made of wood. But they said they were going to mark me so I would be easier to identify next time."
His mark is a circle of skin the size of a coin gouged from his forehead above the right eye. The rest of his body is an orgy of bruising, with deep welts the shape of rifle butts.
It says a lot about the determination of the MDC that, despite all the violence being waged against them, and despite Mugabe attempting to ban the memorial service, that yesterday it went ahead. And yes, it did take the form of an opposition rally.
As if to emphasise Tsvangirai's point, Mugabe had another opposition leader, Last Maenghama, abducted as soon as he left the church. His badly beaten body was discovered dumped 40 miles outside of Harare.Speaking to a packed church yesterday at the highly charged memorial service for one of the activists murdered during the recent crackdown, student leader Prosper Mkwananzi voiced the growing anger of a country in crisis: "If they make a peaceful revolution impossible they are making a violent revolution inevitable," he told a roaring crowd.
Civil society leader Lovemore Madhuku, one of the regime's staunchest critics, nursing a broken arm from police beatings, led the calls for change. "Some of you may not recognise victory when it comes. Today is victory. They said they would break this memorial. They steal a body... Fine, you've done that but we still go ahead. Mugabe has given up."
The final word went to Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC, pictures of whose graphic head wounds put Zimbabwe's plight back in the international spotlight.
"Oppression is oppression whether it's by a white government or a black government. Independence alone isn't freedom," he said.
This has to be the end. Mugabe's behaviour has now descended to that of a street thug. Any pretence at statesmanship has been abandoned. We are left looking at a vicious, nasty old man prepared to go to any lengths to hold on to power for powers sake.
We have, indeed, reached a tipping point. For, conversely, the more violence Mugabe now enacts upon his opposition rivals, the more he reveals how near he is to toppling. It's becoming an almost self fulfilling prophecy.
I have spoken before about my reservations about replacing one Zanu-PF dictator with another, and will no doubt return to that subject in the near future, but for today I will simply be watching as Mugabe teeters towards the brink.Speaking at his home in the suburb of Avondale Mr Tsvangirai told The Independent that these desperate acts by the state showed his country has reached a watershed and that the Mugabe era is coming to a close.
"Mugabe has reached a dead end within his own party. He is paralysed. He is not able to unite his own party. The opposition in the meantime has a new spirit and people are looking to the MDC for change. These two forces have never before presented themselves at the same time."
The end is nigh, and in Osterley the champagne is going on ice...
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