One can only hope that this band of criminals are brought to justice sooner than later. Neighboring South Africa under Thabo Mbeki has consistently offered support to Robert Mugabe, somehow excusing his excessive violence against the people of Zimbabwe because he was part of the African liberation movement. In the minds of too many of that generation, liberation is used as an excuse for torture and murder. Liberation made sense but violence against your own people is still violence. Now that the government has changed and there is a power-sharing government, Mugabe's ZANU-PF goons are resorting to even more violence in an attempt to gain amnesty for previous crimes.
They will probably get away with it unless the opposition holds firm and neighboring powers take a stand. More from the NY Times:
“Their faces were immediately pasted on the wall for everyone to see that they were behind the killing, the violence, the torture and intimidation,” said a senior official in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, who, like others in the party, spoke anonymously because he was describing its criminal history.
To protect themselves, some of Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants are trying to implicate opposition officials in a supposed plot to overthrow the president, hoping to use it as leverage in any amnesty talks or to press the opposition into quitting the government altogether, ruling party officials said.
Like South Africa at the end of apartheid or Liberia at the close of Charles Taylor’s reign, Zimbabwe is in the midst of a treacherous passage from authoritarian rule to an uncertain future. After a bloody election season last year stained by the state-sponsored beatings and killings of opposition supporters, Mr. Mugabe and his rivals in the Movement for Democratic Change agreed to a power-sharing government that includes both victimizers and victims.