(dpa) -
President Robert Mugabe used his country's independence celebrations speech to
attack his perennial enemies - the former colonial power Britain and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
But while the elderly leader was pledging to uphold Zimbabwe's independence the
West some people were nursing wounds sustained for exercising a right Mugabe
and his fellow liberation struggle comrades had fought so hard for: the right
to vote for their preferred leader.
"Independence celebrations are meaningless," said Matthew Takaona,
president of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, who was bruised after being
beaten by soldiers in a town on the edge of Harare called Chitungwiza a day
earlier.
Zimbabwe is on a knife edge over the nearly three-week wait for results of
last month's presidential elections, in which opposition MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai claims to have ended Mugabe's 28-year rule.
Tsvangirai claims he won the election outright. Mugabe's party says
neither he nor Tsvangirai won decisively and that a runoff will be needed. The
MDC won the parliamentary vote.
The state-controlled Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has
withheld the results, while at the same time announcing a partial recount for
Saturday.
In a by now familiar pattern of retribution against the population, soldiers
entered a bar where Takaona was drinking with friends and beat the patrons for
daring to "enjoy themselves" after "voting wrongly" in the
March 29 election.
The MDC claims four of its members have been killed in such attacks. The
Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights say they have treated scores of people for
injuries sustained in post-election violence.
"What independence is there when the security forces who
are supposed to protect you - when you see them you run away? We are not
free at all," Takaona asked. "We still have to be liberated in actual
terms - economically and politically."
As Independence Day dawned the attacks continued. About 30 soldiers travelling
in two unregistered army trucks rounded up young men in the low-income Harare
suburb of Glen View Friday morning and took turns beating them.
According to bystanders the victims' offence had been to
"provoke a soldier."
"They think we will forget our results. We want election
results," Hilda Garwe said. Garwe's brother in Mutoko (about 200 kilometres from Harare) was beaten up by youth militia for urging people to vote for the MDC.
But Mugabe on Friday gave the delayed results and the
international opprobium it has caused little shrift, accusing Britain of using
cash to turn people away from him and warning Zimbabwe would "never be a
colony again."
His nationalist rhetoric got cheers from his 15,000-strong audience in Gwanzuru
stadium of mostly children, uniformed soldiers and people shepherded there by
youth militia.
But his critics worried that this was not the speech of a president on the
ropes.
"It seems he wants to stay in power," said Lovemore Madhuku, head of
the National Constitutional Assembly civil society umbrella group.
"You could tell even from the way he was using hate speech against whites.
On television or radio it is the same, we see very disturbing images of
dead bodies, war or disturbing songs and speeches."
Over the past few weeks state-owned television and radio
stations have been playing "political" songs and speeches to invoke
memories of the 1970s liberation war.
One of the songs, "Mr Government" by Man Soul Jah, a supporter of
Mugabe's Zanu-PF, celebrates the government's seizures of white-owned farms and
calls for killing of perceived political sell-outs.
The song speaks of people living like squatters in the land of their homeland
and asking for spears so that they can kill the "sellouts" in their
forefathers' country.