The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
Retired high court judge Fergus Blackie was arrested at four o'clock on Friday morning at his home, according to friends of the family.
The arrest is the latest incident in a series of conflicts between the government of President Robert Mugabe and the judiciary.
Judges have overturned government decisions on the media and the land resettlement programme, to the anger of ministers.
Seven judges have resigned or retired early from the bench in the last 15 months, and there is only one white judge left in the high court.
Twelve white farmers were also reported to have been arrested in the southern area of Chiredzi on Friday for defying eviction orders requiring them to leave their farms.
On the same day, the government gazette published new regulations on land resettlement which are intended to speed up the process of land redistribution.
Fraud
The arrested judge came into conflict with the government on 18 July, the day of his retirement from the high court.
He sentenced the Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, to three months in prison and fined him 50,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($900) for contempt of court.
The sentence was later overturned on appeal.
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Information Minister Jonathan Moyo accused the judge of racism after the verdict against his fellow minister.
Former Justice Blackie has been detained in connection with a fraud case in which he quashed the conviction of a white woman convicted of stealing from her employer.
The South African press agency reported that the judge is said to have overturned the conviction against the woman without consulting the black judge who sat with him in the case.
No charges have been laid against Mr Blackie.
Challenging evictions
The white farmers' support group Justice for Agriculture (JAG) said on Friday that 12 white farmers in the Chiredzi district in the south of the country had been arrested for defying eviction orders that required them to leave the farm.
John Worswick of JAG said that the men, all sugar farmers, were likely to be held over the weekend, according to the French news agency, AFP.
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He added that all 12 were planning to challenge the eviction orders.
The government is attempting to speed up the evictions of white farmers.
The government gazette on Friday published new regulations to make it easier to seize land.
The proposed new measures, which parliament is likely to debate next week, cut the time given to farmers to leave farms from 90 down to seven days and increase fines for defying orders from 20,000 to 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($1,800).
John Worswick of JAG said that farmers knew of the new proposals and would challenge them in court if they are passed by parliament.
ZIMBABWE: THE WAY
FORWARD
THE ZIMBABWE CRISIS AND THE WAY FORWARD.
Remarks by Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai,
President of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Mass Public Opinion Seminar,
Harare Sheraton Hotel.
September 9 2002.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The dimensions of the Zimbabwe crisis are mutating and seemingly becoming more pervasive throughout every aspect of our political, economic and social life. The regime has consolidated all its arsenal to defend personal privileges. So that to the ordinary Zimbabwean citizen and international observer, the forces of democracy have become even more embattled, more beleaguered than at any time in the past three years. But the democratic forces have remained resilient and will ultimately weather the storm of tyranny. The old adage still holds: The darkest hour is before dawn. The regime has expended all its resources of tyranny and the will of the people shall prevail. However in the context of this onslaught, there are some fundamental questions, which every Zimbabwean democrat and democratic forces are asking:
The answers to these fundamental questions define and condition our agenda for action now and in the future.
The majority of Zimbabweans looked towards the aftermath of the presidential poll with rekindled hope. They expected to experience positively changed circumstances in their economic, political and social lives. They expected that the aftermath of the presidential poll would present them with boundless opportunities to forge a new and more enduring political culture. They yearned for a period of national healing, in which the nation could come to terms with its traumatic experience and devise strategies to handle the political demons of the past three years in a mature and constructive way that would permanently vaccinate against future relapses into tyrannical evil and darkness. So, to many Zimbabweans, the stolen presidential election had a much more devastating effect than any physical catastrophe could ever have achieved. It was a shattering setback for change.
All the visions and hopes for a new democratic political dispensation appeared shattered by the stolen presidential poll. The cherished agenda for a new democratic political dispensation and political culture appeared to have been negatively re-written through sustained state terror and violence.
However, this did not kill people’s hope for change.
In the context of this derailment from the preferred course of deliberate and positive change, where are we now and where are we going? In order to chart an effective path for the future, we have to have an accurate picture of where we are. There is absolutely no doubt that in the aftermath of March 2002, we are in the middle of a ferocious struggle against the massive forces of a qualitatively different and more dangerous form of tyranny. At independence in 1980, the people of Zimbabwe regained their national sovereignty and with it, albeit theoretically, their basic freedoms and national independence. Tragically since 1980, the Mugabe regime has been encroaching on both national sovereignty and the people’s basic freedoms. The stolen presidential election completed this negative process of change. Today we therefore face vastly changed political circumstances without precedent in our history of independence. The process of subverting and ultimately neutralising of the people’s sovereignty has been completed. The people are no longer sovereign and basic freedoms have been abolished. The Mugabe regime has redefined national sovereignty to mean that Mugabe is now sovereign. He has become a benevolent dictator who grants and withdraws basic freedoms according to the whims of his temper.
People’s basic freedoms are now under quarantine, there are confined to a political arena that has been effectively shrunk. Through the effective closure of democratic space, people have been violently forced to depart from democratic political activity into prescribed spaces defined and created by the dictatorship. The will of the people as expressed through their representatives in the legislature has been subverted. One absolute ruler now wields the functions of the judiciary and law enforcement agencies. Mugabe’s will is violently rendered the will of the people. The fusion of the three pillars of state, i.e. the executive, the judiciary and the legislature, has resulted in the obliteration of the last vestiges of a civilian administration. This is a veritable coup de’ tat against the regime’s own shoddy constitution that is in place. Therefore, what confronts us in Zimbabwe today is an absolute dictator presiding over a civil-military junta and imposing an illegitimate government on the people. So the new and lived reality in Zimbabwe today is that after a long and bloody protracted struggle, Mugabe has completed putting in place a repressive infrastructure to become an absolute monarch, presiding over a totalitarian state.
This new situation gives rise to two further fundamental questions:
Before answering these questions, let me complete the picture of where we are today. The total emasculation of people’s political power has been complemented by another strategy to reduce the majority of the population economically to the level of Stone Age scavengers available for manipulation and abuse by Mugabe and his cronies.
At the level of the economy, the impact of totalitarianism has been devastating. The collapse of the delivery systems for health, education, other social services and material commodities is almost complete. National economic output has declined by 11% down from 9% in December 2001. Cereal production in general and maize production in particular has declined by 69% and 77% respectively on the 2000/2001 production levels. The national currency has been eroding at a fast rate than the regime can print the money; spending on vital services such as health and education has dwindled while the associated costs to the individual have risen astronomically to 2106% and 857% respectively. The HIV/Aids pandemic is devastating the nation and the regime has no resources to bring about relief. About 81% of the people are now living below the Poverty Datum Line (PDL) and the unemployment rate of economically active people is equally high. The young section of the population entering the job market for the first time has been hit hardest. For instance there are no jobs available for the over 4000 graduates who graduated from our national universities this year. Although spending on the army and police has increased by leaps and bounds, this has not even resulted in any meaningful efficiency in the professional standing of these national forces. The conditions of service of the ordinary soldier and policeman have actually deteriorated, while the officer corps has cornered the major portion of the budgetary allocations for their personal comforts. Hunger and starvation are decimating the nation especially the more vulnerable rural communities with few alternatives for survival. Entire rural communities are being denied food and subjected to an incessant regime of political violence, because they steadfastly refuse to submit to Mugabe’s tyranny. The run-up to the local government elections has seen violence and denial of food relief as the most lethal weapons in the regime’s bid to snuff out any remaining vestiges of the people’s democratic rights.
What this means is that the regime’s war against people’s democratic rights is neatly dovetailing into an onslaught on the peoples’ last survival refuge, i.e. the deliberate destruction and denial of the people’s means of sustenance. As we all know, poverty defeats all possibilities. In the final analysis, the regime’s comprehensive strategy is to weaken the population both economically and politically and render them totally defenceless against the designs of tyrannical rule.
The battle lines between the people and the dictatorship have never been more sharply and profoundly drawn. In this combative equation, the biggest threat to Mugabe’s absolutism is the people’s refusal to be crushed and their stubborn determination to resist.
WHICH IS THE WAY FORWARD?
We remain resolute in our conviction that the illegitimate Mugabe regime shall not be allowed to consolidate and make its fraud permanent. The people must and will reclaim their stolen victory. As a nation born out of a revolution we know that freedom comes at a price and we have absolutely no intention of letting the dictator hold the nation to ransom and in shackles forever.
As a political party, which believes in peace and democracy rather than violent confrontation, immediately after the stolen presidential poll, we accepted an invitation from Nigeria and South Africa to give dialogue a chance. We entered into negotiations with ZANU PF even though we knew from the beginning that the regime regarded the whole exercise as strategy to buy time and assuage people and that both Nigeria and South Africa were more interested in managing the crisis rather than its resolution. So from the very beginning there were no ingredients for the talks to succeed. Whatever the future holds Zimbabweans and history will absolve us.
We face vastly changed circumstances from those that confronted us before the stolen presidential election, but it is important to emphasize that the democratic movement is neither in retreat nor paralysis. The struggle for freedom under these changed circumstances has just begun. The illegitimate Mugabe regime is on the run. We must now employ qualitatively different methods of struggle from the ones that won us the 2002 presidential elections. Within the MDC, this new phase of the struggle has already started. As a political party, since our arrival on the Zimbabwean political landscape, we had never had ample opportunity to put in place solid and purposive structures to enable us to enter the political fray and come out triumphant. The process of party building went hand–in-hand with real political combat on the ground during the parliamentary elections in June 2000, the presidential elections in March 2002 and during the various local government victories that we registered. The violent onslaught by ZANU PF found our structures in a state of infancy, but we survived. We fought battles while simultaneously building the party and we survived. Our first major task was to reorganise and strengthen the party. That programme was completed at the end of August 2002 and we are ready to go into mortal combat against the illegitimate regime.
The starting point of our new struggle must be rooted in our history. We must go back to the noble ideals of the liberation struggle, which have been prostituted and monopolized by the illegitimate Mugabe regime. We must re-dedicate ourselves to the unflinching quest for justice, freedom, peace, prosperity and the restoration of the supremacy of the sovereign will of the people. These are the ideals of the liberation movement abandoned by the Mugabe regime, which have now come to describe the inner soul of the MDC. This rededication calls for new strategies to galvanise the people of Zimbabwe to confront the dictatorship wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.
In the ferocious struggle that lies ahead, the MDC must undergo a period of rebirth or renewal. It must go back to its roots, to its cradle, to its base. As a Social Democratic Party we believe in the strength of purposive unity of all progressive social forces. The coming mass storm against tyranny must obliterate all artificial and tactical strategies among the MDC, the labour movement, the civic organizations and the constitutional movement in order to forge a purposive alliance for a PEOPLE’S STORM in a final confrontation with autocracy. We must reach out to all the progressive forces in society, such as the Church organisations, which share with us the same values of democracy, peace, good governance and human rights. Each of the components of the PEOPLE’S STORM must build certain purposive competences, with the participation of the people of Zimbabwe, competences that will lead to the last push on the corrupt and dictatorial regime that has relied on raw power to subjugate the people. The culture of democratic activism and instinctive resistance to tyranny must be continuously cultivated.
The question that many of you are burning to ask is whether mass action is still on the agenda. My answer is that, we shall never acquiesce to tyranny. The Mugabe regime has been busy over the past few months preparing a fertile ground for an unavoidable and unstoppable show of people’s power. The momentum for this is being generated daily by the regime’s actions. We are impelled by circumstances to move inexorably in that direction. But this does not call for adventurism, the temptation to which must be resisted at all costs. During periods of crisis such as the one we are experiencing, frustration at the seemingly slow pace of events and overall change, might tempt some sections of the broad democratic movement to abandon the common strategy and vision and come up with sectional programmes that may appear to hold the key to the resolution of the crisis, leading to the abandonment of a common platform for the struggle and the corresponding weakening of the democratic front. There may be a mistaken view that there could be other alternative visions out there when it seems that the present shared vision is taking too long to accomplish. Such individual adventurism is a negative force in the process of amalgamating and harnessing people’s power. It feeds on all efforts to galvanise a united people’s front against tyranny. We must all synchronise and consolidate our efforts in a final show down against autocracy. Whatever action we take must be strategically calculated to yield the desired results. There can no room for failure or rearguard remedial action.
We are aware that the Mugabe regime is putting in place strategies to divide the united stand of all the democratic forces in the country through such diabolical schemes as the so-called government of national unity or GNU in order to avoid an election re-run and compromise the people’s desire to reclaim their stolen victory. The systematic brutalisation of the democratic forces that has been sustained since the stolen presidential election is part of a grand strategy to weaken the opposition and ultimately swallow it through the so-called government of national unity. To the concept of a GNU our answer has not changed. We say NO to any attempt to expand and legitimise fraud. We remain unshaken in our conviction that the only way out of the present crisis is through a fresh free and fair presidential poll under international supervision. On that score there can be no compromise or surrender. We are also aware that the regime intends to imprison or drive into exile a certain number of MDC legislators in order to enable it to achieve a two-thirds majority in parliament and thereby facilitate a change in the current constitution to enable Mugabe to slide into oblivion without the need for a fresh presidential poll as mandated by the current constitution. Our response to that ruse is quite predictable. The people will massively resist any illegitimate tampering with the constitution.
We shall never allow the political proceeds from fraud to be inherited by Mugabe’s handpicked successor.
Some people may wondering why we still take part in elections in view of the fact that they are routinely rigged and as such, continued participation in the electoral charade exposes people to physical danger and demoralisation. Yes elections have yielded death and destruction, but we cannot abandon them. Elections are part and parcel of our broad strategy to remove Mugabe from power. As a democratic movement, which believes in the creation of an enduring democratic culture in the country, we value the democratic educative value of elections. They are an essential component of our national political curricula and political practice to build a democratic culture. However, should we decide in the long run that this route has run its course, then we will have to devise other effective non-violent modes of political combat. But this will mean that the people are organized to the strength of an unshakeable bundle. Such an alternative course of action must be sustainable. It cannot meaningfully be just an angry knee-jerk reaction with no chance of successfully withstanding the inevitable onslaught from the dictatorial regime. Mugabe has already declared that he is ready to shed more blood in order to remain in power, so again in this scenario, adventurism could be counterproductive. Casualties on Zimbabwean citizens must avoided or minimized. This calls for the leadership of all the democratic forces to be responsible and minimize chaos.
The final choice on when to change course, strategy and tactics might not necessarily lie with the formal structures of the organised democratic movements. It must be remembered that over the past three years it is the MDC, which has kept the peace in the face of a sustained regime of state terror and violence. After the March 2002 presidential poll, during the politically charged and explosive atmosphere that engulfed the nation, we counselled restraint when people were ready to mount barricades and go into the trenches. As a political party we chose the legal route in challenging Mugabe’s electoral fraud, as a practical demonstration of our sincerity in the quest for peace even though the regime was taunting us to take up arms. And this is also why we have always had a peaceful political solution to the crisis, i.e. a re-run of the presidential poll under internationally supervised free and fair conditions, rather than a call to arms. We have therefore acted as a restraining force on the people to desist from confronting violence with violence. But now we have reached a stage whereby it may no longer be possible to keep the lead on. The people are angry. They being battered, murdered, raped, tortured and brutalised on a daily basis with no end in sight. Whatever happens from now on is entirely the regime’s responsibility. The people cannot take it any longer.
So the launching pad to reclaim our stolen victory must be the immediate strengthening and consolidation of all the democratic forces in the country. Our goal remains the speedy installation of an MDC government.
However we realize that dictatorship is not simply an internal problem. Rather it is a regional, continental and international problem. The denial of a democratic entitlement to good governance is a recognised international problem, which in many circumstances before our own predicament, has jogged the conscience of the international community and has routinely jolted it into action. Murder, crimes against humanity and the systematic violation of human rights are international problems and so is the deliberate sabotage of sustainable development.
We therefore call upon all progressive forces in the region and the continent to rise up to the Mugabe outrage. Mugabe’s dictatorial project points to nobody’s future. It undermines collective efforts at regional and continental advance. We call upon the SADC region to be steadfast and resolutely confront the Mugabe tyranny. We call upon President Mbeki to rise up and assume the regional leadership for which we have waited for so long. We wish to remind him that the resolution of the Zimbabwe crisis is not altruistic, but it is for the common good of all of us. We call upon President Obasanjo of Nigeria to show the same kind of resolve that he demonstrated when confronting evil in his own country. To the Commonwealth, we ask for increased political and diplomatic pressure on the Mugabe regime. Most importantly, the United Nations should not remain on the sidelines, when crimes against humanity are being committed by this brutal, corrupt and murderous regime. To the rest of the international community, we say: we cherish your past support, please remain with us as we walk the last mile towards our freedom.
I hold no brief from Mugabe, but his standpoint, like that of all bloody dictators is simple to grasp: All democratic forces that dare challenge his autocracy must be literally killed or slaughtered. This is what he considers to be the final solution to all the democratic challenges to his illegitimacy. I have a message for him from all the democratic forces in Zimbabwe:
You cannot destroy an idea that defines the people’s preferred circumstances and conditions of living. Your bullets cannot stop the tide of change. Bloodshed from an illegitimate regime can never, and in history has never, neutralized the potency of change that has to happen.
Finally, my message to my fellow Zimbabwe remains very simple. Freedom is not free. As that illustrious son of Africa, Nelson Mandela prophetically said all those years ago: There is no easy walk to freedom. Fellow Zimbabweans, the remainder of the path to our freedom is still littered with skeletons and splashed with the blood of innocent people. Lets soldier on with courage and determination.
I thank you.
As Zimbabwe’s President attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York, his opponents in Harare released a dossier showing how nearly 600 of their 1,200 candidates had been blocked from contesting the ballot. Leaders of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said that Western powers were so obsessed with dealing with Iraq that they were ignoring President Mugabe’s worsening reign of terror.
Paul Themba Nyathi, the MDC’s Director of Elections, who has met Foreign Office diplomats in London, said: “Mugabe is acting with impunity now because he knows he can get away with it. Western leaders talk about dealing with tyrants, so how does Mugabe escape?”
MDC candidates have been kidnapped and beaten to stop them from registering in time for the September 28 elections. Police roadblocks have been placed at registration centres in some parts of the country to bar access by MDC candidates and armed militias have waited outside a number of offices to intercept opponents attempting to meet the deadline. Some candidates are still being held hostage.
Mr Nyathi said: “So who do we complain to about this? The courts, the police, the election officials are all in Mugabe’s pocket. Look at who the beneficiaries are who are being given previously white-owned farms — judges, army commanders, secret police chiefs, senior policemen; so who maintains the law? “The West is more concerned about the confiscation of white-owned farms and Mugabe’s performance at the Earth Summit to monitor this latest episode. It doesn’t matter what sort of intimidation is employed during campaigning if you have stopped nearly half of the opposing side from even standing.”
For his part, Mr Mugabe told the UN yesterday that Zimbabwe had cast off the “colonial yoke for all time”, and attacked Britain and Tony Blair. He said: “I appeal to this General Assembly to convey to Britain and especially to . . . Mr Tony Blair that Zimbabwe ceased to be a British colony in 1980 after Prince Charles had gracefully lowered the British flag.
“He should also be informed that the people of Zimbabwe waged an armed revolutionary struggle for their independence and stand ready to defend it in the same way.”
The campaign of intimidation in Zimbabwe is worse than that during the presidential election campaign earlier this year. Mr Mugabe won, but international observers said that the election was flawed. For the vote on the last weekend of September there will be no outside observers.
The MDC’s dossier alleges that one of Mr Mugabe’s ministers, Didymus Mutasa, led a Zanu (PF) mob in Manicaland that was stopping opposition candidates from registering. In Chegutu a mob stormed the district offices, assaulted MDC officials and abducted Hilda Mafudze, the local MP.
In Midlands South, 100 miles (160 km) south of the capital, 36 candidates pulled out of the election and 20 other aspiring councillors were assaulted and tortured.
Typical of the assaults was the midnight abduction last month of Wilson Mabhera, the MDC chairman in Hurungwe. He was woken by a group of men who said that their lorry had broken down and asked for help. As he stepped outside he was dragged to the lorry where he recognised some of his Zanu (PF) opponents. He was beaten for two hours and told he would be killed if he stood in the election.
The MDC leader has begun a court challenge to March’s presidential election. He has also warned that the growing frustration inside Zimbabwe is leading to a “people’s storm” which is ready to take on what he calls the President’s “civil-military junta”.
MDC leaders have restrained their followers from mass demonstrations because they fear that the security forces will be ordered to use “extreme force” against any protest.
Mr Nyathi said: “Frustration is boiling over. There is hunger and soon there will be starvation. If you remove their only hope, which is the election, then what have people got left but to protest?
“The West does not think Zimbabwe is a priority and so Mugabe can do what he wants. It’s too late for any observer force. The damage has been done. This election is the worst fraud yet."
Dear Mr. President,
I thank God everyday that you are the man in the oval office to lead our nation against the Muslim terrorists that threaten not only our way of life but freedom everywhere. My confidence is high with you as our commander-in-chief. I believe that we will ultimately prevail in this new kind of war in which we are engaged despite the best efforts of the petulant, morally-challenged naysayers quivering in their boots in the United Nations, academia, and elsewhere. Honestly, if history had turned out differently and you were not the leader of this nation at this time in history I would be truly frightened for America and the rest of the Free World.
Even as we wage this war against Muslim terror, I implore you to take action to stop the Atrocities that are taking place right now in Zimbabwe where Marxism, in the form of Mugabeism, is rearing its ugly head, leaving a path of death and destruction in its wake. Please do not allow another Rwanda-like nightmare to occur in this majestic country. The world needs to open its eyes to the despot named Robert Mugabe and the horrors that he is perpetrating on the people of Zimbabwe. Where are all those people who were so passionately condemning and attempting to prosecute an out-of-power Pinochet? Where are they now that they have an opportunity to really confront evil that is occurring right now and on a much greater scale? Americans need to be hit in the face with this real-life horror story that is unfolding in Zimbabwe. They need to see that evil did not stop after 9/11; indeed, evil is a like a nefarious virus that just never stops shedding. Strong medicine is required to break the stranglehold that this despot has on the good people of Zimbabwe and the United States is the only nation and with the one leader having both the moral clarity and the will to administer the treacle for this evil being unleashed in Zimbabwe.
The atrocities the he and his minions are committing amount to raw, pure, unadulterated evil. They have subverted the rule of law and have supplanted the natural rights of man with their own evil, racist desires. They are stealing legally acquired land from productive, hard-working farmers who, along with their ancestors, have worked these farms for generations. They are being run off their lands by threats of bodily harm and death. Moreover, Mugabe is exploiting the fact that they are white as a way to justify these greedy, evil deeds. Mugabe’s “war veterans” are doing much of his dirty work, raping and pillaging wherever they go while the police stand idly by, allowing them to commit their mayhem. Normal commerce has been severely disrupted, leading to the threat of mass starvation while Mugabe, his kin, and his goons take over the farmers’ dwellings and hoard the food, satisfying their own rapacious appetites and doling out crumbs only to those who will pledge allegiance to realizing their evil Marxist blueprint. Meanwhile, millions of men, women, and children go starving and the numbers of unemployed continue to rise with no hope in sight.
Actually, this has the potential to be much worse than Rwanda, believe it or not. If Mugabe is allowed to continue his evil ways and implement his Marxist design in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe could experience something analogous to the Great Leap Forward plan that was implemented in China under Mao Tse Tung, a plan which resulted in the death of 30 million people (mostly farmers and others living in rural China) within three years. Mass starvation coupled with the already mounting AIDS epidemic that is ravaging much of the continent of Africa could prove catastrophic, beyond the horrors that have occurred thus far.
I state this for the record knowing full well that you know all of this and more. Yet, I do so to urge, in the strongest of terms, and in the name of everything that we believe in as Americans, as children of God, in the name of all that is just and good, that you make these crimes against humanity that are occurring in Zimbabwe one of the priorities in your foreign policy and exterminate the tyrant Mugabe before he succeeds in doing so to the innocent people of Zimbabwe.
Regards,
John O'Connor
Los Angeles, CA 90034
David Davies, Welsh Assembly member for Monmouthshire, is supporting the 22-year-old man, known only as John, who wants to join his mother, who now lives near the Welsh borders.
We can't help you because you don't have the right to a
British passport |
John, visa claimant |
However, on Friday evening, Mr Davies announced that the British Embassy in Harare will provide a visa to John but at a cost of £6,000 - which he says, John cannot afford.
Mr Davies appealed to Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to investigate allegations that John was turned away when he sought help from the British Consulate.
Mr Straw has promised to look into the case.
John, who was born in Zimbabwe but is the grandchild of British citizens, has allegedly been beaten by Harare police officers.
He said he went to the British High Commission in Zimbabwe for a visa, but was turned away.
The man said he informed staff at the commission of his situation.
"I was assaulted by the police and I started telling him my story," he said.
Passport rights
"He asked 'was your mother born in the UK' and I said no.
"He asked 'was your father born in the UK' and I said no - only my grandparents were born in the UK.
"He said, no we can't help you because you don't have the right to a British passport."
David Davies, Monmouthshire MP, who recently helped launch Zimbabwe Hope, a scheme to help citizens forced out of the country, said the man is entitled to a British visa.
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"This gentleman has got right of abode in Britain because his grandparents were British.
"How we do this, I don't know - I'm not an expert, but that is what the staff in the consulate should be there to sort out.
"His life is under threat, he has been asked to report to police.
"He is on the run from the police in Harare at the moment - he has been beaten up by police once already and has been warned that if he does get picked up by the police, his life and safety cannot be guaranteed.
"Anyone who is a British passport holder has the right of citizenship in Britain.
"It seems there is only one person at the British High Commission in Zimbabwe who can help and he is on holiday.
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"The foreign office has not sent anyone to cover and that is absolutely disgraceful when you consider the country is falling apart at the moment," he added.
Jack Straw said that he would examine the evidence.
"I will look carefully at this complaint," said Mr Straw.
"I can't comment more than that because I haven't got all the details.
"Except to say it is implausible that anyone in the British High Commission would have been able to talk to him about an asylum application which is what I understand heI went there for.
"No British High Commission in the world entertains asylum applications - asylum can only be claimed in Britain on our territory," he said.