A Rape victim in Mutare
"They are raping on a massive scale," said Frances Lovemore, a counsellor at the Harare-based Amani Trust which monitors torture. "Girls as young as 12 or 13 are being systematically taken and used and abused because of their families' political views."
The organisation is compiling video evidence that it hopes to use to help to bring Mr Mugabe to trial at the international court of human rights. An investigation by The Telegraph found that rape camps had been set up for youth militia and riot police in rural areas.
Victims living in hiding related how they had been gang-raped by police and self-styled war veterans, and had their genitals burnt with iron rods. They said that they had been abused in revenge for their parents not supporting Mr Mugabe, 78, in the presidential poll in March.
Other opponents of the government were badly beaten. As a final indignity, in a land where half the population is on the verge of starvation, victims claimed that militia members often urinated on the family food.
A former militia member recounted how he and others were instructed to attack wives and daughters of opposition sympathisers.
Human rights activists believe that this is part of a programme to drive out, kill or terrify into submission all those who oppose the president. Didymus Mutasa, the of Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF, has even spoken of halving the population to six million.
Details of the violence have emerged as world attention focuses on Mr Mugabe's campaign to evict white farmers while famine threatens.
Critics say the land reform programme is a cover for his war on opposition. "This isn't about race or land, it's about a political tyrant who wants to kill, break down and cripple all opposition," said Roy Bennett, a farmer who is an MP in Manicaland, eastern Zimbabwe, for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. [End]
Let me try to describe what Rhodesians then were like. Rhodesia was declared by the stupid UN (dominated by communists and assorted trash) to be "a threat to world peace". How 250,000 white people living in Africa could be a "threat to world peace" I do not know. I suspect it was just communist-speak meaning that if the Western world had the balls to stand by us, that the entire Soviet Bloc would throw in their lot against us. We were under comprehensive world sanctions meaning we could not buy anything or sell anything to anyone. We could not buy oil, weapons, cars - nothing. We could not sell our beef (Rhodesia had one of the finest beef herds back then - a far cry from the Zimbabwe Ruins of today). Rhodesia was under constant attack and pressure from everywhere.
The thing I remember the most about Rhodesia, and cherish the most, was the UNITY of the people. We whites were absolutely determined to resist the British handover to Marxists like Mugabe and Nkomo. We kept saying we would hand over power to "responsible government" - which meant: NO MARXISTS and NO SOCIALISTS! That was really the main thing we wanted. In the end, we did not get even that - we got our worst nightmare - Robert Mugabe.***