[This is democracy Mugabe-style. I love it. Think about this, over 90% of Blacks once voted for this cretin… yet Whites have consistently said he was a dictator… and Whites are proven right… but nobody admits it… Wait and see… Mbeki or his successor… will be no different. Jan]

Gwanda – Deputy Foreign Minister and ruling Zanu PF Member of Parliament for Gwanda constituency, Abednico Ncube, has ordered traditional leaders in the area to compile lists of people who voted for the opposition in last month™s election so they can be barred from receiving food aid. Ncube is said to have last week told headmen from the villages of Ntepe, Guyu, Garanyemba, and from Oakley, Jannie, Jonesly, Dwala and Tshabezi, all former white farms where black farmers have been resettled by the government, that he wanted them to explain how the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party won more votes in those areas. The government official is said to have vowed to prevent the Grain Marketing Board, which provides cheaper priced maize to hungry villagers from distributing the key staple in the targeted areas until headmen and their subjects say who among them voted for the opposition. According to MDC deputy spokesman for Matabeleland South province, under which Gwanda falls, Petros Mukwena, Zanu PF officials deployed in the constituency during the March 31 poll as election officials were able to record specific wards and villages where the ruling party lost to the MDC and supplied the statistics to Ncube. He said: “Zanu PF officials were deployed in the farms as election officials. Their presence during the counting process enabled them to take note of areas where Zanu PF lost. They are now using that information to follow up on such areas.”

But Ncube, who beat MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi to take the Gwanda parliamentary seat, vehemently denied engaging on a witch hunt to punish villagers suspected of having voted against him. The parliamentarian, accused of personally committing political violence during the run-up to the controversial poll, admitted meeting traditional leaders but said the meetings were, “merely post-election consultation meetings (focusing) on development programmes.” He said there was no reason for him to persecute people when he won the seat. Mukwena said the MDC had reported Ncube™s alleged threats to starve the opposition party™s supporters to the police. But police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said he did not have information on such reports by the opposition party. Hundreds of villagers in many parts of the country particularly in Manicaland and Mashonaland West provinces have reported that they are being denied food if suspected of having voted for the opposition in the just ended election won by Zanu PF with 78 seats against the MDC™s 41. The MDC has refused to accept the poll results saying Zanu PF secured victory through fraud. The European Union, United States, Germany, Britain and Australia have also condemned the election as having been neither free nor fair. But South African and Southern African Development Community observers gave the election the thumps up.

From Zim Online (SA), 18 April
Source: WWW.ZwNews.Com