In the past few weeks alone, over 86 MDC supporters have been murdered and hundreds more have been savagely beaten and tortured by ZANU-PF’s thugs. The injuries sustained by many of the survivors are horrific, evidence of an evil barbarity that would scarcely be believable were it not for the mute testimony of gaping wounds on the dead and the dying across Zimbabwe. Only a week ago, Dadirai Chipiro was caught at her house by three Zanu men looking for her husband, an MDC councillor. They held her down and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet, so that she would be unable to run, and used a petrol bomb to burn her alive inside her home. Words are insufficient tools to describe the depravity of men who could do that to an innocent woman.

The final straw came yesterday morning, when an MDC rally in Harare was attacked by dozens of Zanu militia who proceeded (in full view of present policemen) to attack the assembled MDC supporters with such vicious aggression that a party MP now lies in the ICU fighting for his life. It was these conditions that Tsvangirai faced, and which convinced him that even the simple act of voting would be impossible. In fact, he's so uncertain of his own personal safety that he spent last night under the protection of the Dutch embassy.

Whatever happens next, Zimbabwe is going to experience many more dark days of violence in the coming weeks and months. This decision may result in a brief period of calm, but the assault will not stop until Mugabe believes he has utterly destroyed the MDC and made it impotent as a political threat. After all, he has done this before. It was only 2 years after he took office in 1980 that Mugabe deployed the North Korean-trained and equipped 5th Brigade into the rural Matabeleland strongholds of ZAPU, the party of his rival Joshua Nkomo. Over several months the Brigade pillaged the countryside, executing and torturing thousands of innocent people in an orgy of violence very similar to that facing Zimbabwe today. By the time Operation Gukurahundi (the rain that washes away the chaff) was finished, an estimated 20,000 Matabele civilians were dead. It was a crime against humanity, an action far worse than anything even Ian Smith’s regime had perpetrated. Yet the world turned a collective blind eye and let Mugabe get away with it

For the sake of Zim’s people, let’s do all we can to ensure he doesn’t get away with it this time. And whether you’re going to give to a charity, write in to a newspaper or take part in a protest march just do something. You do not want to realise, in 5 years’ time, that you did absolutely nothing to help those suffering in one of the greatest political and humanitarian disasters of our age...