HARARE, ZIMBABWE — The mob materialized quietly in the fading dusk light. There were 50 youths hurrying along, armed with sticks, rawhide whips and knives. It was Sunday night, just over a week after Zimbabwe's disputed national elections, and even before the shouting began, John Saramu knew what was going to happen.
He felt it in the knot of fear in his stomach.
"They just appeared on the corner. In my heart I felt afraid. I saw them very close to me," said Saramu, an activist for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in a farming district outside the town of Mutare.
"They came into my house. They were shouting, 'We want to kill you!' They were saying, 'We want to go around and find all the MDC supporters one by one, and we want them to get out.' "
Saramu, 39, said he was beaten for two hours by members of a gang that was pro-President Robert Mugabe, and that his house was ransacked before he got away. His right leg and left hand were badly cut.
"I escaped by a whisker. I don't even know how I did it," he said. The assailants stole cash and a list of MDC members, which could be used to find and terrorize other opponents.
Saramu and about 50 other activists near Mutare in Manicaland province were hunted down in their homes, said Misheck Kagurabadza, the area's MDC parliamentary candidate, who defeated his foe from the ruling ZANU-PF party in the recent election.
Intimidation of opposition activists is occurring in rural areas of Zimbabwe that have traditionally been ruling party strongholds but where the MDC scored upset parliamentary victories. One activist has been killed.
The fear tactics are viewed both as political retribution and as an attempt to scare opposition supporters from backing the MDC in a possible presidential runoff, allowing the 84-year-old Mugabe to hold on to power. Many believe the heavy-handed tactics are working.
MDC spokesman Shadrick Vengesai said hundreds of opposition activists and supporters had been arrested, beaten or displaced in Zimbabwe since the March 29 elections, for which the presidential results have yet to be released by the Electoral Commission. The parliamentary outcome has been announced, and Mugabe's ZANU-PF, for the first time in the nation's 28 years, has lost control of the legislative body.
The opposition insists that its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidential vote outright, and it fears rising violence if election officials decide a runoff is needed.
