Chiwenga's lack of professionalism is "product of liberation war", says Chitiyo - no, mukadzi waMugabe.

Alarm bell of security sector reforms have started ringing once again as top brass in the Army and Police step up the threat of using violence to silence legitimate demands for democratic change.

"Which part of the army and whose army will he deploy against citizens and his opponents?" asked Ibbo Mandaza. He was responding to General Chiwenga’s reported threats against opposition and Zanu PF infiltrators plotting chaos.

"Is it his army? Is it proper for a defence chief to threaten the population with military force and is it proper for him to talk politics the way he has? He has openly breached the constitution and the law."

It should be noted that Zimbabwe had the opportunity to implement the far reaching democratic reforms when Mugabe got his hands tied behind his back after signing the 2008 GPA. SADC forced the tyrant to accept the implementation of wide ranging democratic reforms which would have end the partisan bias of the Army, Police, public media, etc. and thus ensure future elections were free, fair and credible amongst many other things.

Sadly Morgan Tsvangirai ignored repeated calls by SADC to implement the agreed reforms and failed to get even one reform implemented in the five years of the GNU. Mugabe went on to blatantly rig the 31 st July 2013 elections and from that day on the nation has felt the consequences of MDC’s betrayal.

“Simbi inorohwa ichapisa!” (Hit the iron whilst it is hot!) as the saying goes. We failed to reform the Army, Police, etc. whilst we had the chance to do so and now face the prospect of Army and Police behaving as Zanu PF party thugs!

“According to Knox Chitiyo, an academic and former University of Zimbabwe War Studies and Military History lecturer, Chiwenga and his colleagues' lack of professionalism is a generational product of their participation in the 1970s liberation war that bred "an uneasy and uneven duality between professionalism and politicisation within the security sector," reported Bulawayo 24.

“The post-Independence aftermath bred what Chitiyo described as an "adherence to the ideology of (black) African liberation … the increasing melding of the party, state and government; and the close 'liberation alliance' between the party and the military", Chitiyo wrote in a 2009 article titled The case for Security Sector Reform in Zimbabwe.”

I would beg to differ with Chitiyo’s analysis; Zimbabwe is not the only African country whose independence was brought about following a bitter armed struggle; many of SA’s Army, Police and Intelligence Agency are ex-uMkhonto we Sizwe, African National Congress (ANC)’s armed wing for example. Yet none of SA’s security top brass have ever behaved as rogues as contrast to our own who have all time and time again pledged their undying allegiance to Mugabe and Zanu PF when the democratic norm is for them to be apolitical and to up hold the rule of law.

Whilst SA’s founding father, Nelson Mandela, was committed to freedom, liberty and democratic rule the same cannot be said of our Robert Mugabe. Whereas Madiba, as Mandela was affectionately called, went out of his way to build strong democratic institutions our murderous tyrant in Zimbabwe has worked hard to corrupt our institutions to serve his selfish political interests.  Before independence the security sectors were structured to maintain white colonial supremacy above all else. After independence Mugabe remodelled them to maintain the de facto Zanu PF one-party cum Mugabe one-man dictatorship above all else.

Zimbabwe had the great misfortune of having a corrupt and murderous tyrant for founding father assisted by a coterie of some of the most corrupt and incompetent individuals in human history. Margaret Dongo has described Zanu PF bigwigs in cabinet, parliament, Army, Police, etc. as “vakadzi vaMugabe” (Mugabe’s subservient concubines); she got that one right, because over the last 36 years no one has ever challenged Mugabe’s outrageous and murderous excesses! No one!

How did the liberation war turn everyone in Zanu PF into a subservient Mugabe concubine?!!!