Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party was widely believed to have ordered the arrest of Bennett as a way of undermining the power-sharing deal. Twice lower courts ordered Bennett released on bail, orders Mugabe ignored. Now out of jail, Bennett described the horrid conditions he found inside.
“I would not wish it on my worst enemy,” he said, adding that some prisoners, routinely deprived of food, looked like photos of inmates from the Nazi concentration camps at Dachau and Auschwitz. Bennett said several prisoners died while he was locked up, their bodies lying in their cells for days before being removed.
In a sign though of the growing discontent for the Mugabe regime, Bennett's jailers were sympathetic towards him, bringing him extra food and asking members of the MDC who visited him for “Free Roy” T-shirts, ‘Ten for the day guards, and eight for the night guards,’ according to reports.
Stories like that and the sudden, wide-spread belief in Zimbabwe that the traffic accident which injured PM Tsvangirai and killed his wife Susan last week wasn’t an accident at all, but rather an assassination attempt seem to be making Mugabe realize that he has a weak (and growing weaker) hold on power in Zimbabwe. Mugabe rushed to visit Tsvangirai in the hospital and made a show of sitting with him at a state funeral for a former military leader this weekend. Afterwards Mugabe described their coalition government as being “between us, brother to brother.” Mugabe called for factions within the ZANU-PF and MDC to “stop fighting” and be united, before adding in his usual digs against the British (Zimbabwe’s former colonial masters).
Perhaps its a hopeful sign that Mugabe is finally getting the message and will actually be an honest participant in the coalition government rather than trying to undermine it like he has been doing ever since it was proposed last year in the wake of his disputed reelection as president.
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