'If I return I will die, but my children will know the truth'

ARMED men held her husband back as they threw her to the ground and began pouring buckets of icy cold water over her. The attackers were wearing the army-style fatigues favoured by Robert Mugabe's youth militia, the Green Bombers.

In the winter's night she started to shake and her husband cried out when the men began to beat her face, her neck and her body until she couldn't move. And then, in front of the house where she had just put her three children to bed, they raped her.

The attack lasted more than half an hour, until she was in so much pain she could barely move. Than she was blindfolded and taken away.

"I could smell my own blood… I thought that I had come to the place of my death."

Four years later, Ancilla Chifamba is sharing a tiny second-floor flat in a rundown area of Glasgow, her children are still in Zimbabwe and her husband has fled to South Africa.

Chifamba wants to be reunited with her three children, who she has not spoken to in the long months since she left Zimbabwe.

But she believes that can only happen if President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party are ousted from power in this weekend's elections – a hope that observers say is hanging in the balance and could well be scuppered by brutal, cynical tactics employed by the tyrant to cling to power.

Chifamba and her young family used to live in Marondera, a busy community set in the rolling farmland of Zimbabwe's breadbasket, about 45 miles outside Harare. She had an esteemed position as a primary school teacher, and her husband had a business employing farm workers for the mostly white-owned farms nearby. They had three young children: two girls and a boy.

"We were industrious," she said. "We had a good life, a good home."

But towards the end of the 1990s, things began to decline. "Life changed for the worst," she said. "Prices for food and household goods skyrocketed, medicine became unavailable. You had to queue for hours, sometimes days, to purchase bread. It became difficult to find jobs. Even if you were educated, the expectation that you would find work was low.

"If you complained to the government, they wouldn't listen to you," Chifamba said. "You just had to accept it."

Riots and strikes gripped the country, but the economic crisis persisted.

Her father was a prominent supporter of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, and this political tradition carried on to his daughter. But as the political situation continued to deteriorate, she joined the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). She began participating in rallies and protests, and word spread quickly in a town loyal to Mugabe.

Minders from the Zanu-PF party began following Chifamba. She was scared, but she didn't stop attending demonstrations for the MDC. Then she started to talk about the importance of voting to her students at school. They would be, after all, the future leaders of Zimbabwe.

"I was at my school the first time they beat me," Chifamba said. "They hit me over and over again with sticks and their fists in front of all the other teachers to send a message to the community: this is what will happen to you if you support the MDC! They would do anything to silence you. A teacher is someone who is trusted. A teacher is the mouthpiece of the community. They couldn't have a teacher saying these things about Zanu-PF."

It was a few months later, on June 16, 2003, that she was dragged from her home, beaten and raped.

"As soon as I was outside, I was thrown to the ground," she said. "It was winter in Zimbabwe and they poured buckets of icy cold water all over me. I started shaking and shaking, and then they started beating me and didn't stop. Then I was raped. My husband was held back and three men raped me in front of him. I could smell my own blood. I could taste it in my mouth."

More than half an hour later she was blindfolded and taken away.

"You just can't describe the pain that you are in. You can't move. When I took off the cloth from over my eyes, I saw blood stains all over the walls. I thought that I had come to the place of my death."

She awoke from unconsciousness later at a medical clinic. Scared for her life and her family's well-being, she went into hiding. Friends and family members sheltered her while she used the few contacts she had to help her leave the country. A cousin in the UK offered to help, and surprisingly she was able to complete the paperwork that would allow her to escape in 2004.

"We are talking about a government that is ruthless," Chifamba said. "In Zimbabwe, you don't talk about politics. If you say there is no food, it is politics. If you say there is no medicine, it is politics. It is the kind of atmosphere people live in."

The United Nations' World Health Organisation claims the nation has the lowest life expectancy in the world for women: 34 years. And in a nation that was once a net food exporter, at least three million people are starving.

"This is the kind of government that doesn't care," Chifamba said. "There is fear in Zimbabwe."

Despite being away from the terror in her home country, she lives a tenuous existence in the UK. After her arrival, she spent a few years being constantly shuffled around London, before ending up in Glasgow last November. With the help of the asylum seekers' charity Angel Group, she received a place to live for the first time, about a mile from the city centre.

But while Chifamba may be safe, her mind is constantly occupied with the wellbeing of her family more than 5,400 miles away. She is especially worried that her eldest daughter will be raped, because she is 13 and is starting puberty.

"I am a mother. And I don't know if my children are crying, or if they are hungry or if they have enough food to eat. It is hard for my husband. He asks me, do you have a boyfriend? Have you forgotten me? I am not myself here. I want to live with my family and be with them when they grow."

She said that she wants to return home but is worried of being detained at the airport, because she has been targeted by Zanu-PF before. She fears that she could be taken into permanent custody, or even killed.

"I will go back to Zimbabwe. It is my country, my home," she said. "I became political because of choice. If I return, my children will lose a mother. But it is better for my children to know that I died this way. They will know the truth. They will know that I tried my best."

• Zimbabwean asylum seekers and supporters plan to hold a human rights vigil in Glasgow's Argyle Street every fortnight until internationally monitored elections are held in Zimbabwe. The first was yesterday.