All who blame the barbarism of the Police and Army of the last two weeks
on the stay-away organisers, the street protesters and/or looters have missed
the point completely. The point being that Zimbabwe is NOT a healthy and
functional democracy in which the Police and Army are limited to the usual
duties of maintaining the rule of law and protecting the people.
"The challenge with the current situation is that the organisers of
the protests failed to be smart in their risk analysis,” said Church and Civic
Society Joint Forum chairman Anglistone Sibanda.
“They were sacrificing ordinary, angry and frustrated masses hoping to
achieve some normative leverage and international sympathy from Sadc and AU
forgetting that those institutions have always been about brotherhood. By
getting violent, looting, burning cars, killing police officers, they lost the
plot and fell into a trap. The government got something to justify its actions
before these brotherhood institutions.”
Sibanda is just a confused person who has himself fallen into the Zanu
PF’s trap.
It is not beyond Zanu PF to have deployed its own agent provocateurs
encourage the street violence and looting to justify the state violence that
followed. How many times did we see the white farm invasions flare up again and
again during national elections, for example? The violence would then spread to
engulf urban and rural areas where opposition members and supporters would be
harassed, beaten, etc. under the pretext they supported the white farmers and
would give back the seized farms if they won the elections.
But even if we accepted that there was not even one Zanu PF agent behind
any of the looting and lawlessness and the Police and the Army were deployed
for the sole purpose of restoring law and order and had no political agenda.
Still one has to question why it was necessary for them to use so much
violence. Why were the security officers beating and kicking someone who is
already grovelling in the dirty or is handcuffed?
Why did the Police and Army raid people’s homes in the dead of night and
beat up all the male occupants? If the authorities had evidence of wrong doing
they should have just arrested the criminals and left the law take its course
and not be the arresting officer, the judge and executioner all rolled into
one.
Of course, the Police and Army had a political agenda beyond their call
of duty to maintain law and order - their mission was to send a clear message
to all but especially to Zanu PF’s political opponents and critics that the
party will stop at nothing including turning State Police and Army themselves
into lawless thugs in its effort to silence all dissent against it continued
rule!
It is bad enough that one should ever find themselves a victim of an
criminal activity. Still, there is some comfort in the knowledge the criminal
will be arrested and brought before a court of law so the victim get redress
and justice. There is panic and despair when those entrusted with the powers to
arrest, prosecute and punish are the criminals and so commit their heinous
crimes with total impunity.
Many women and girls were raped during the ten days or so of Police and
Army blitz. To whom were these women and girls supposed to report the crime and
have any confidence there will be justice!
Society has already granted the Police, Army, etc. super-duper powers
such as the power to arrest and to use weapons and therefore it is folly to
they should ever be allowed to abuse their powers and act above the law.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guards themselves?)
asked the Roman poet Juvenal, born 50 AD.
The Romans and all civilised nations before and after Juvenal’s time,
have all answered this rhetorical question comprehensively – it is rule of law that
will guard society against the guardians becoming corrupt. No one, absolutely
no one, will be above law.
In Zimbabwe, the Police, Army, CIO, judiciary, ZEC, etc.; they are all
Zanu PF departments in all but name and named by corrupt party proxies all
committed to the no regime change mantra. There was no way Zanu PF could enjoy
absolute power and still up hold the people’s freedoms and rights and the rule
of law and so these have been jettisoned a long time ago.
The barbarism by the Police and Army of the last two weeks had to do
with maintaining the rule of law but everything to do with everything to do
with re-enforcing the Zanu PF’s no regime change agenda. The party’s blatantly
rigging of last year’s July elections, its issuing of the “shoot to kill!”
orders to stop the 1 st August protests and many, many other acts of
lawlessness including the Gukurahundi massacre; they all saved the same purpose
of retaining Zanu PF’s iron grip on power at all cost.
Zimbabwe is stuck in this hell-on-earth because the nation is ruled by
thugs who have contempt for the people’s freedoms and rights including the right
to free, fair and credible elections and even the right to life. Zanu PF rigged
last July’s elections, the regime is illegitimate and must step down.
The real tragedy is that even now, with the benefit of 38 years of
corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule and the nation on the brink of total
collapse, there are people who still refuse to admit lawlessness is our biggest
problem. This is a problem identified at the very dawn of human civilization
and we still fail to see.
There is no doubt that the violent response by the Police and Army had absolutely nothing to do with maintaining law and order but everything to do with Zanu PF beating the nation into submission to consolidate it autocratic and tyrannical hold on power. The rioting, looting and other acts of lawlessness are but a cover, a smokescreen, to hide the regime's real agenda. "Kurova imbwa wakavinga mukinhi!" (Hit the dog with a well hidden stick!) as one would say in Shona.
ReplyDeletePeople like Sibanda are just too lazy or stupid to think because Kuro imbwa wakavinga mupinhi now a well established Zanu PF modus operandi. The regime used this two weeks ago, last year to quell the 1 st August protest, during Gukurahundi, etc. At each and every one of these occasions the security services expanded their operations to include many, many more people than they set out to target. There were a few hundred dissidents, for example, and yet over 20 000 civilians were murdered by the state security during Gukurahundi.
The concept of rule of law as the only way society can guard the guards if they should be corrupt is logical and common sense. Why some people, in this day and age, should still struggle to understand it beggars belief. They see but do not perceive; they hear but do not understand. The tragedy for Zimbabwe is we have more than our fair of those who see but do not perceive who hear but do not understand and, to crown it all, the idiots have a vote!