Incidents of political brutality and violent intimidation by militias under the control of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are on the rise, an independent watchdog said Sunday, according to dpa. The 86-year-old autocratic president has vowed elections will be held this year, two years after he was forced to enter a power- sharing government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. But fears are growing that the polls will be accompanied by waves of state-driven violence similar to those that have preceded every other election since 2000. The Southern African Coalition for Survivors of Torture on Sunday reported cases of murder, mob violence, attacks on pro-democracy supporters including a shooting, and the repeated failure of police to take action. It also claimed a national campaign had been started to force two million people to sign up to a petition supporting Mugabe, who turns 87 on February 21, and his Zanu-PF party. The second-in-command of the Zimbabwean air force, Henry Muchena, had been addressing meetings of party officials around the country and had told them that the army was taking over the running of Zanu- PF's election campaign, a bi-weekly newspaper, The Zimbabwean, reported Sunday. The party's once-powerful structures, which once controlled nearly every aspect of life in the country, were collapsing as a result of disillusionment with Mugabe and a decade of economic ruin, political researchers have reported. Opinion polls have given Tsvangirai a 6 to 1 lead.
