Last week I wrote about my heartache over the appalling revelations about youth training camps in Zimbabwe where thousands of youngsters are being trained to torture, beat and kill members of the political opposition – including their relatives; where thousands of young girls are systematically and repeatedly raped and where government officials discuss murder and death as carelessly as though they were talking about a soccer game.

(continued from last week)

An official in the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation - the government agency responsible for running the camps – fled to South Africa to escape the horrors he had experienced and was interviewed by BBC Panorama’s Hilary Andersson. His experiences, however, had obviously already dehumanized him so some extent. This is demonstrated by his comments: “You are moulding somebody to listen to you. So if it means rapes have to take place in order for that person to take instructions from you, then it is okay. We used to discuss the torture and murders quite casually – as though we were discussing the results of a football match.”

If this is how the decent fellows think, I shudder to imagine the callousness of those still running the camps. Images of Nazi Germany spring to mind. Thank God for Hilary Andersson’s film. Now the world can no longer say: “We didn’t know what was happening.”

A camp commander interviewed told Panorama that the brainwashed youths, who have been reduced to little more than vicious killing machines through a process of brain washing, rape, drug and alcohol dependence, will be used by ruling party to disrupt the activities of the political opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the run-up to next year’s general election.

“We don’t want the opposition to set foot in the rural areas (to campaign for the election). That is our main priority – in fact they will never set foot there during this coming election,” said the commander. The terrorization of the rural (largely uneducated) electorate has long been a Mugabe campaign strategy. He successfully used it during both the 2000 general and 2001 presidential elections, when alarming reports of torture, rape and mayhem by groups of drunken ‘green bombers’ (youths dressed in green camouflage fatigues) filtered in from the rural areas. But now it would appear the strategy is going to be unleashed on the Zimbabwean public on an unprecedented scale. Some 50 000 young people have already been through the camps. The populace faces the full-scale wrath of Mugabe – who obviously now realizes that he will be spurned by the electorate in 2005 – unless he resorts to such diabolical measures.

There can be no more excuses. The civilized world and its various agencies must act to stop this megalomaniacal dictator – and quickly. Time is running out for thousands of children whose minds and spirits are being traumatized by evil and violence.

The contrast between the lives of the children in my country and those in my adopted city of Tilburg was brought home even more painfully this week as I visited a local high school. The cheerful young faces greeted me warmly – full of interest and compassion – keen to learn, happy, inquisitive and concerned, a bright hope for the future. I have been near to tears a lot lately.


All columns by Wilf Mbanga

Wilf Mbanga, one of the founders of the independent Zimbabwean daily newspaper "The Daily News", is currently living in Tilburg, the Netherlands. He writes about the differences between Tilburg and Harare. His column is printed weekly in "Het Brabants Dagblad".