Harare - The British managing director of Zimbabwe's most sophisticated private clinic was forced into hiding on Friday to escape President Mugabe's militias demanding money from the hospital.
Malcolm Boyland, 48, from the English coastal city of Brighton, sped away in a vehicle from the Avenues Clinic in central Harare, with a burly private bodyguard, to join his wife and two children, aged eight and five, already at a secret location somewhere in the capital.
He ordered additional private security for the hospital in case so-called guerilla veterans came looking for him.
It was within minutes of a 4.30 pm deadline set by veterans to present himself at the headquarters of Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party.
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| 'I don't intend to offer myself as a sacrificial lamb' |
A lone plainclothes police detective came several hours after the hospital's alarm calls. Police have failed to respond previously to calls for help.
"I have been summoned to Zanu-PF headquarters," Boyland said as left his office and gave final orders to his staff.
"Considering that some of my colleagues have been battered there, I don't intend to offer myself as a sacrificial lamb."
The British high commission here told him to go into hiding, he said.
A fortnight ago the hospital management paid Z$6,3-million (about R900 000) to 32 retrenched former workers, under threat of violence from the militants.
| 'We are still effectively under siege' |
The payment has meant the hospital has had to cancel orders for vital new equipment.
"We had them here again this morning," he said. "We are still effectively under siege." The militants were demanding all 32 ex-workers be reinstated and paid millions more dollars.
Ironically, the personal aide who survived a vehicle accident that last week killed his boss, a powerful ruling Zabu-PF official, is recovering from his injuries in the Avenues clinic. The hospital is used by most senior party and government officials, who eschew state hospitals.
Earlier on Friday, a small group of militants coming to extort Z$5,6-million from Zimbabwe Spring Steel in the capital's industrial sites, were repulsed by the company's 132 workers.
Managing director Marco Garizio said the veterans had been there twice in the last week, demanding back pay for 39 workers who, he said, agreed to retrenchment packages in October last year. He said the company would not pay. "It's extortion, that's the only word for it," he said.
It was the first time in the last six weeks of raids by Mugabe's militias that a company has refused to back down to the illegal demands.
Scores of Zimbabwean executives have been assaulted and abducted in the last six weeks by ruling party mobs claiming to be "resolving labour disputes."
About 250 companies have been raided and forced to pay huge sums of money to settle disgruntled former workers' grievances. Executives say there is clear evidence the veterans routinely are paid a "commission" of about 15 per cent by workers.
Critics say the raids are a bid by Mugabe to win support in the country's urban areas where Zanu-PF was comprehensively beaten in parliamentary elections in June last year. - Sapa-DPA
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