'Vote Mugabe or you die'. Inside Zimbabwe, the backlash begins

The Guardian are this morning leading with a story about the tactics Mugabe is now employing on the streets of Zimbabwe.

The patients at Louisa Guidotti hospital said there were eight men, one carrying a shotgun, another with an AK-47, others with pistols, and they went from bed to bed forcing out anyone who could walk.

Nurses were dragged away from the sick. Motorists driving by the hospital, 87 miles north-east of Harare, were stopped and taken from their cars.

About 70 people were gathered in the grounds. Then the lecture began. "This is your last chance," said one of the armed men. "You messed up when you voted. Next time you vote you must get it right or you will die."

The article tells of how people are then forced to volunteer to canvass for Mugabe and how those who do not seem keen enough are beaten. They are also being threatened and made to point out opposition supporters.

Sandati Kuratidzi lives on the hospital grounds because his wife is a physiotherapist there. He is an activist with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change which stunned Zanu-PF by apparently defeating Robert Mugabe in the presidential election, although the electoral commission has still to release the official result 12 days later.

When Kuratidzi saw the pick-up with the armed men draw up, he knew what was coming and hid on top of a cupboard.

"They warned people that if they voted for the opposition they would be killed. They had AK-47s, shotguns, guns in their belts. People were very afraid," he said. "They were saying they were going to show an example to anyone supporting MDC and they asked the people to point out who they were but no one did. Their behaviour was inhuman."

Then the men piled back into their truck and set off for the next village.

One can only imagine that scenes like this are possibly occurring all over Zimbabwe. This is Mugabe employing his shock troops, intimidating everyone ahead of the second ballot and after a first ballot which went so badly for him that, twelve days later, we have still to be informed of the official result.

But before that second ballot we can expect this scene to be played out all over the place.

Across provinces such as Mashonaland, Manicaland and Matabeleland, where the opposition campaigned freely for the first time and made strong inroads into Zanu-PF's support, armed gangs move from village to village, forcing people to meetings and threatening dire consequences if the vote goes against Mugabe again. Opposition supporters are identified and beaten or driven from their homes.

The opposition say they fear that these tactics might be working as Mugabe creates an atmosphere in which people are simply too afraid to vote against him.

Louisa Guidotti hospital is in Mutoko East constituency in Mashonaland East, once a Mugabe stronghold where Abel Samakande was the MDC's parliamentary candidate. Samakande lost but made strong inroads into traditional Zanu-PF territory, picking up about 42% of the vote.

Now that achievement is coming back to haunt those who supported him. He said the first indication he had of the return of the terror tactics was when he was tipped off by friends in Zanu-PF that he was being hunted.

"They told us there was a meeting at which it was decided to eliminate one of the local MDC leaders. Our friends in Zanu-PF warned us not to sleep in our houses, to move in groups," he said. Then he had a call telling him that armed men had descended on the village of Matsande.

"When we heard about these armed men we went to the police for assistance. The officer in charge said he could not help," said Samakande.

With both the police and the army acting as if they were Mugabe's personal henchmen, it is no wonder that ordinary Zimbabweans react to terror tactics such as this.

But the very fact that Mugabe is having to behave in this way in order to try to terrify people into supporting him, only underlines the illegitimacy of his claim to be Zimbabwe's chosen leader.

And, even as he does all this, South Africa's Mbeki, one of the few people on Earth whose condemnation might have some effect on this situation, stays stubbornly silent.

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Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Zanu-PF