The Movement for Democratic Change has accused President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front of beefing up the army to prepare for a violent campaign in 2018 because it knows it will lose the elections.

Party spokesman Obert Gutu said there was no other plausible explanation on why the army was recruiting now when the government was failing to pay existing civil servants on time.

“As a peace – loving social democratic political party, the MDC is also alarmed by the fact that the ongoing massive army recruitment exercise is deliberately targeted at building the ZAU-PF regime’s ‘war arsenal’ in preparation for the 2018 harmonized elections,” Gutu said in a statement.

“The war-mongering and paranoid ZANU-PF regime has never hesitated to unleash its security apparatus on unarmed Zimbabweans each time that the regime is faced with an impending humiliating electoral loss.

“This is precisely what happened during the farcical Presidential election run-off in June 2008 when armed soldiers and other security operatives were unleashed in urban and rural areas and in the process orchestrating an unprecedented orgy of violence and thuggery against peace – loving civilians.

“Hundreds of people were brutally murdered, thousands of women were raped and thousands of homesteads were also destroyed as the brutal ZANU-PF terror machinery went into overdrive.

“Because the ZANU-PF regime is sensing a crushing and humiliating electoral defeat in 2018, it is already re -tooling and sharpening its instruments of terror, thuggery and brutality,” Gutu said.

Mugabe lost to Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC in March 2008 but Tsvangirai reportedly did not get enough votes for an outright victory.

Tsvangirai pulled out of the re-run following a massive campaign spearheaded by the military to get Mugabe elected.

Mugabe had allegedly conceded defeat to Tsvangirai and was ready to hand over power but he was told by the military that he was not going anywhere.