Pro-Mugabe mobs attack opposition supporters

Mobs of pro-government activists launched an Easter campaign of violence in Zimbabwe yesterday, broadening their attacks on white farmers to assaults on grassroots opposition supporters and even non-partisan families in townships and rural settlements.

Farm workers in areas near the capital, Harare, which whites fled earlier in the week, were selected for attacks ranging from intimidation to the deployment of troops to physical violence, said sources. The incidents, which included the burning of huts, were centred on Marondera, Arcturus and Wedza, north and east of Harare.

The campaign coincided with the launch by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of a leaflet drive called Let's Go Home, in which workers returning to their villages were encouraged to spread information about the opposition party. People in many remote rural areas, who have access only to state radio and cannot read or afford to buy newspapers, have not heard of the MDC.

In Nyamapanda, in the north-east of Zimbabwe, some 200 civil servants were reportedly rounded up and chased from their homes by people wearing T-shirts of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF). They were accused of supporting the MDC.

The MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, made a defiant speech at the funeral yesterday of Tichaona Chiminya, his driver, who died with another person in a firebomb attack on his car last Saturday.

Mr Tsvangirai, who was in London at the time of the attack, said: "There is a clear message - they are going to kill to achieve their objective of crushing the MDC. But they will not succeed.'' The growing violence, which has claimed at least six lives in 1,000 farm occupations and firebomb attacks, comes as President Robert Mugabe was being placed under international pressure to set a date for delayed parliamentary elections.

The President met other southern African leaders yesterday at the Zimbabwean resort of Victoria Falls, where they intended to press him to defuse the crisis, which they fear will damage investment in the region. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, telephoned Joaquim Chissano, the Mozambican President, to enlist him as a mediator in the crisis.

Mr Chissano discussed the unrest with Mr Mugabe. He also talked with the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, and the Namibian leader, Sam Nujoma. Mr Cook said he and Mr Chissano agreed that the farm invasions must end before the issue of land reform could beaddressed.

Mr Cook said: "If President Mugabe is really concerned about the future of his country and the future of his people, it's time he started to assess the enormous economic damage he is doing to his people as a result of the current breakdown of the rule of law."

Yesterday there were a number of reports that the mobattacks and roadblocks, ostensibly led by veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war, were being carried out with the support of soldiers in the presidential guard of the Zimbabwe Defence Force. The guard incorporates the Fifth Brigade, which in the 1980s was responsible for mass killings of civilians and opposition activists in the south-western Matabeleland province.