Anyone who blames the barbarism of the Police and Army of the last two weeks on the stay-away organisers, the street protesters and/or looters has missed the point completely. And 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 deploy 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 down?
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!
There was nothing that the street protesters and looters did that would ever justify the scorch the earth response by Police and Army. The violence street protesters are criminals and in going after the criminals one does not expect those tasked with the duty to maintain law and order to turn into even worse criminals and terrorised the rest of the population.
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 question was well answered the Romans and every other successful civilisation before them and since - rule of law and that no one, absolutely no one, is above law.
In Zimbabwe, the Police, Army, CIO, judiciary, ZEC, etc.; they are all Zanu PF departments in all but name. They are all corrupt to the core and are committed to the same no regime change mantra. Zanu PF leaders and the party corrupted proxies in the Police, Army and in every sector of society have routinely thrashed the constitution, rule of law and have ridded rough shod over the people denying them their individual freedoms and human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections and even the right to life itself.
The barbarism by the Police and Army of the last two weeks had nothing whatsoever to do with maintaining the rule of law but everything to do with making sure Zanu PF retains its iron grip on power. The party blatantly rigged last year’s July elections, issued the “shoot to kill!” orders to stop the 1 st August protests and many, many other acts of lawlessness including the Gukurahundi massacre for the same purpose - to retain absolute power at all cost.
If Zimbabweans are serious about ending the economic meltdown, the blatant vote rigging, the brutal oppression, etc., etc. then we must fight for the restoration of rule of law and that no one is above the law. By rigging last year’s elections Zanu PF thugs once again confirmed that they are above the law. After 38 years of rigging elections and getting away with it we must not allow this to happen ever again.
Zanu PF does not have the mandate to rule, the regime is illegitimate, it must be forced to step down.
Zimbabwe is not the first nation to be ruled by lawless thugs and the solution is simple enough - restore the rule of law. We have been stuck with this Zanu PF dictatorship for 38 years and counting; we must now grasp the nettle and demand that no one should ever be above the law!
Zanu PF has entrapped this nation into this corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship for its own selfish political gains. “Street protesters lost the plot and fell into a trap!” Yeah right! What regime that it truly accountable to the people would ever do anything to entrap the people! The real tragedy is we have people like Sibanda naive and gullible enough to justify institutionalised lawlessness and barbarism.
We must restore the rule of law now and not be giving excuses to perpetuate it!
2 comments:
Minister Ncube keeps talking of ending government waste when he is the one who had approved the hiring the Boeing 787 - 8 Dreamliner Jet for 10 days at a cost of $74 000 per hour!
The economic reforms this Zanu PF regime has imposed are hurting the poorest of the poor. The 2% tax on electronic transactions was a drag net designed to catch the millions of vendors who were not paying any income tax. The overwhelming majority of these vendors are living on US$1.00 or less a day already. The cruel thing is the minister has done nothing to stop the wholesale looting of diamonds costing the nation billions of dollars every month!
It is all very well for the Minister to the regime is Pressing ahead with the reforms, he lives in the five star Meikles Hotel at taxpayers’ expense his fellow ruling elite continue to loot to supplement their generous salaries and allowances; it is the poorest of the poor who are being sacrificed here. Worst of all, their suffering will not bring about any meaningful economic recovery.
There is no hope of any meaningful economic recovery as long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs.
Zanu PF rigged last July’s elections, the regime has no mandate to govern and all it is doing now is drag the nation deeper and deeper into this hell-on-earth the party landed us into. For the last 38 years the nation has twiddle its thumbs desperate to end the dictatorship but without much success. The people of Zimbabwe must redouble their efforts and force Mnangagwa and company to step down before the nation the kind of violent street protest as seen last week drags the nation into total economic and political chaos.
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.
People 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!
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