ZIMBABWE: Lovemore is only 22 but walks with a limp because his feet were beaten to pulp. He sits on the edge of the seat because his backside is a swollen mess. His voice quivers when he describes two nights in the custody of President Robert Mugabe's terror squads.
At first the "youth militia" abducted him and pushed his head under water until he almost drowned. Then the prison guards thrashed his head until he fainted. He knew them by their uniforms.
Finally officers from the Central Intelligence Office took him to a downtown office and beat his genitals with a broomstick. "They wanted us to say we were members of the MDC [opposition party] and to tell them where the meetings were held," said the traumatised shop assistant.
The newly-formed youth militia is the latest refinement to Mr Mugabe's violent campaign for re-election this weekend.
Human rights activists have counted over 70 militia groups since bases started to spring up in public buildings - schools, clinics, even a home for the disabled - about two months ago. Officially the young men are on public service. In reality, their function is to terrify people into voting "the right way", or not voting at all.
The militants receive political "education", are armed with sticks or sjamboks - the rubber whip favoured by apartheid-era police - and are then sent out to assault, abduct or torture perceived enemies of the state.
In Mr Mugabe's Zimbabwe, that means anybody who opposes the ruling Zanu-PF party.
"It is terrible. A nation's youth is being trained in militaristic tactics against its own people," said one Commonwealth observer, who saw an estimated 300 militants in one camp outside Bulawayo. People complained of intimidation in every village he had visited.
A month ago Roy was press-ganged into a 35-strong militia camped at Selonga, about 200 km south of Bulawayo. Their task was to block the main road every night and weed opposition supporters out of the passing traffic.
"If people couldn't produce Zanu-PF card, or make the correct salute, we dragged them to the camp and beat them," said Roy. They specialised in falanga, or beating of the feet. Some victims were restrained with handcuffs supplied by the police; several ended up in hospital.
The "base commanders" - two war veterans known as Ncube and Dube - gave political instruction. "We were told that the whites are very bad people. They use to dip our grandfathers in boiling beer," he said.
Roy, not his real name, escaped after 10 days. Now he is in hiding with a relative in Bulawayo.
State-sponsored brutality is nothing new in Matabeleland, the western province of which Bulawayo is the capital. In the 1980s the notorious North Korean trained Fifth Brigade was sent in to quell unrest among the minority Ndebele tribe. An estimated 20,000 civilians were killed.
Mr Mugabe, who hails from the majority Shona tribe, set up a commission to investigate the massacre 18 years ago. Its findings have never been made public. Matabeleland voted overwhelming for the opposition in the 2000 elections and will undoubtedly do so again this weekend.
"What's happening now is an old pattern - you create a smokescreen and then thump the opposition," said Ms Shari Eppel, a human rights worker who has collected hundreds of testimonies from victims of state-sponsored violence since the MDC's popularity started to rise two years ago.
Under a new law, Ms Eppel can be jailed for five years for "usurping the functions of government". Her staff has recorded a sharp increase in torture cases since the youth militia appeared two months ago, counting over 15 bases in Bulawayo alone.
The violence is not all one-way. MDC youth have attacked and hospitalised Zanu-PF supporters, most notably during clashes in Bulawayo last month. But the balance is skewed - three different international observers estimated the ratio of Zanu to MDC attacks at "about nine to one".
The key difference, they said, is that the Zanu youths enjoy legal impunity and unquestioning co-operation from the police and army.
But the Ndebele tradition of resistance may speak louder than state violence. Lovemore, who insisted his real name be used, said he intends to vote this Saturday.
"I feel I have an obligation. Maybe it will make me feel better," he said.