AIDS Activists say Mugabe Party Engaged in Rape in 2008 Zimbabwe Campaign

Aids Free World, a non-governmental organization led by a former U.N. special envoy, says supporters of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party engaged in the systematic violent rape of women who supported the opposition in the widely discredited second-round presidential poll in 2008. 

The report by Stephen Lewis' Aids Free World is based on the testimonies of 70 women drawn from each of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces.  Each gave harrowing accounts of beatings, rape, gang-rape, repeat rapes, and vandalism. 

One victim of both a gang-rape and repeat rapes who now lives in South Africa told reporters she has two reminders of her attacks.  She preferred to remain anonymous.

"After the rapes I started having some colds, fever until I was tested and I was positive," she said. "Most my time spend my time I spend my time crying and thinking of what happened to me.  As a result I have something in my hand that I will not forget that event, because I have got a result, I have got a baby."

Lewis says the HIV positive woman and the others who gave their testimony to researcher represent many others.

"Aids Free World has assembled through affidavits taken from women in every province of Zimbabwe what we believe to be unassailable evidence of rape and torture and savagery visited on 70 women who stand for countless others, sexually terrorized by ZANU-PF for the sole purpose of retaining power," said Stephen Lewis.