“There is a good catch to all this. At no time did Mangota aver that the commander of the Defence Forces, Valerio Sibanda, was approached and participated in deploying the soldiers. Nor did the judge mention the commander of the Zimbabwe National Army. It would seem, therefore, that Chiwenga made the decision without involving the two people in charge of the army. It would always be weird for an acting minister to leapfrog the army generals,” wrote Tawanda Majoni, in Zimeye.
“The last time the law spoke, the president was the ultimate authority in the deployment of the army. His signature must accompany military deployments, so to speak. According to Justice Mangota, Mnangagwa did not deploy the soldiers. Since Chiwenga did and Mnangagwa didn’t, the former has a case to answer. It means he violated the constitution and broke subsidiary laws.”
Another excellent article, thank you Tawanda.
If Justice Mangota has already established who was responsible for deploying the soldiers and giving out the order of “shoot to kill” then one has to ask why bother with the Commission of Inquiry?
If the truth be told, many people had already come to the same conclusion that VP Chiwenga had deployed the soldiers without consulting Mnangagwa. This was not the first time the VP had taken a very important decision without consulting the President - we all remember his summarily dismissal of nurses because they had dared to go on strive earlier this year.
So President Mnangagwa has appointed a Commission of Inquiry to run for months on end at great national expense to establish something that a normal Court was able to establish is a few weeks. What a waste!
Since the Commission of Inquiry had already been establish the Commission should have been given the power to rule on the matter before any other body.
Even is President Mnangagwa was the one who had issued the order to shoot, he still has authority and power to appoint a commission of inquiry. Justice Mangota should have confined himself to address the question of whether or not it is reasonable to assume the Commission would still be sufficiently independent to establish the truth without overreaching and telling the Commission what that truth is!
It is not as if Zimbabwe’s Courts are themselves the bastions of justice one would expect in a healthy and functional democracy given they have played their part in helping Zanu PF tighten its dictatorial grip on the nation. In a recent Con-Court challenge of the election result the Judges acknowledge there were serious electoral flaws in the process from the evidence submitted before the Court. And yet the Judges ignored all this evidence on the shaky grounds that it was not collaborated by the “primary source evidence” in sealed ballot boxes.
The Judges conveniently ignored the plaintiff’s assertion that they had requested the sealed boxes to be opened but the request was denied. The Judges could have ordered the sealed boxes to be opened but chose not to exercise their power and authority.
And so the Judges’ decision to declare Mnangagwa the winner of the elections was based on the assumption that the evidence in the sealed boxes bespoke of a free, fair and credible election contrary to the evidence they have seen but chose to ignore.
Every respectable Election Observer team’s report has confirmed the evidence the Judges ignore and condemned the elections as flawed and illegal!
8 comments:
SADC leaders literally begged Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders not to participate in the 2013 elections without first implementing the democratic reform. "If you take part in next month's elections, you will lose; the elections are done!" they warned. Sadly their warnings fell on deaf ears, Mugabe had bribed Tsvangirai and company to do nothing about implementing the reforms for the five years of the GNU and to listen to no one.
SADC leaders were not only concerned about ZEC helping Zanu PF to rig the elections, they knew all the other state institutions had been primed to do the same including the Courts. So when Chamisa took his election result challenge to the Con-Court everybody in the know knew it was just a waste of time.
It is ironic that the EU, Commonwealth, Americans and every other nation or institution were able to conclude the the elections were flawed and illegal on the basis of the observed election evidence. The Con-Court has sworn evidence from ZEC confirming there were no verified voters' roll, etc. and chose to ignore that evidence on feeble basis that it was not collaborated by "primary evidence in the sealed ballot boxes". The regime had refused to have the boxes opened just as it had refused to produce verified voters' roll, make public a number of V11 forms, etc., etc.
Zanu PF blatantly rigged the recent elections, the party had ZEC and all the other state institution do its dirty work and the Con-Court played its part of giving the process some semblance of legality. Con-Court was there to con the nation!
It is a great pity that MDC leaders have been thoroughly corrupted they are nothing more than Zanu PF's paid acolytes who will never insist on having implementing the reforms, on the release of the verified voters' roll, on having the sealed ballot boxes opened, etc., etc. MDC leaders are too conning the people into participating in flawed and illegal elections knowing Zanu PF will rig the elections.
SADC leaders are right, Zimbabwe will never have free, fair and credible elections without first implementing the democratic reforms. The only way Zimbabwe is going to get all the reforms implemented BEFORE the 2023 elections is be forcing Zanu PD to step down to allow for the appointment of an interim administration that will be tasked to implement the reforms.
If Zanu PF is still in power and entrusted to organise the 2023 elections then we can this right here, right now “the elections are done, Zanu PF will have another landslide victory!”
@ Tawanda
I agree, Mnangagwa may well have used Chiwenga to do his dirty bidding and now that the dirty work is done, Mnangagwa is double crossing Chiwenga by blaming and punishing him for it! This is nothing new, this is exactly what Mugabe has done with Mnangagwa and others all these years, use them and then discard them like used toilet tissue. This time last year Mugabe wanted Mnangagwa killed after all the 37 years of doing Mugabe's dirtiest laundry.
Chigumba said ZEC could not have announced presidential elections results earlier than it did because results transmission, as provided for in the law, was “slow” as it has to be done physically.
One only hopes that the Commissioners are not that naive and gullible to believe such a foolish and shallow explanation. What excuse does ZEC have for failing to release the verified voters’ roll, for failing to produce some of the V11 forms, etc. The whole electoral process was a a litany of blatant vote rigging, proof the elections were rigged.
If the Commission of Inquiry was truly independent and relevant then it must state in no uncertain terms that Zimbabwe will never hold free, fair and credible elections until the reforms designed to make such institutions as ZEC open and independent are implemented.
Reacting to this suggestion, General Ancelom Nhamo Sanyatwe of the National Reaction Group, claimed that members of the national army did not kill anyone as soldiers fired warning shots into the air to scare protesters.
He was further questioned on a video showing a soldier seemingly firing shots into the crowd instead of pointing the gun into the sky.
General Sanyatwe, who is attached to the Presidential Guard, said the soldier’s shooting poster indicated that he was not firing at innocent civilians.
He said the person who shot the video together with journalists who were closely following the soldiers would not have been near the scene if the army was firing at civilians.
General Sanyatwe dismissed as “fake news” testimonies of some people who told the commission that they witnessed soldiers firing live shots at protesters.
He claimed that the people who were shot may have been killed by common people as most businesspersons in Harare own guns.
General Sanyatwe further claimed that they received intelligence reports before the protests that members of the Movement for Democratic Change led by the Vanguard, which he alleged had military training, wanted to remove the government by force soon after the July 30 elections.
His claims appeared to be backed by Police Commissioner Matanga, who told the commission that MDC leader Nelson Chamisa is linked to the protests as he allegedly told party members to reject the outcome of the presidential election.
Matanga said the MDC leader was supposed to have been arrested long back but this was delayed in order to avoid “fuelling the fire” as people were still agitated following the elections.
But MDC spokesperson Jacob Mafume dismissed suggestions that Chamisa was to blame for the protests and subsequent killing of innocent civilians in Harare on August 1st.
The hearings continue Tuesday with no indications that Chamisa and Mnangagwa will testify
If General Sanyatwe was from the Presidential Guard then surely President Mnangagwa must have known about the deployment of these soldiers! According to Justice Mungota it was Chiwenga who deployed the trigger happy soldiers!
Why the Judge had jumped the gun to come up with his pronouncement on the matter ahead of the Commission of Inquiry was questioned and now it is as clear as mud - the Judge is deliberately mudding the waters.
In post Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe, social media is still viewed by the government as a threat and the administration of President Emerson Mnangagwa has leaned on Japan to procure equipment which many fear could be used to snoop on private citizens communications under the guise of fostering cyber security.
Zimbabwe is additionally tapping into China for facial recognition and will provide millions of facial data for the Chinese to build the software. Former President Robert Mugabe’s administration sought to criminalise social media users for posts deemed to be offensive to the government and to the leader.
But on Monday, ICT Minister, Kazembe Kazembe said Zimbabwe was finalising the cyber and computer crimes bill which will be backed by cyber security equipment to be procured using a US$3.6 million (R51.7m) grant from Japan.
It is interesting to note that Zanu PF is sparing no expense to spy on the people whilst doing very little to revive the country's comatose economy.
How far would $3.6 million have gone in procuring equipment to treat and bottle water, for example? It is disheartening that millions do not have safe drinking water and we are spending hundred of thousands if not millions of dollars on imported water.
Mnangagwa would not be so fearful of the people revolting against his regime if he had won free, fair and credible elections and had the people's popular mandate to rule the country! By rigging the elections he has not only scarred away would be investors but worse still he is now spending the little money there is on beefing up his dictatorship!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAQ3NXS0cBU&feature=youtu.be
General Ancelom Nhamo Sanyatwe has just given his eye witness account of the events on the 1 st August 2018. He insisted that the soldiers seen in the video firing were not shooting the civilians as the guns were pointing up at 45 degrees (although the gun in the video is point straight ahead). The general insist the soldiers did not shoot anyone that day! We can put his account to one side what is clear is that Sanyatwe was certainly present on the day.
General Sanyatwe is from the Presidential Guard, it is inconceivable that the presidential Guard was deployed without the President knowing. This is putting Judge Mungota's claim that VP Chiwenga deployed the army without President Mnangagwa knowing into question!
MDC leader Nelson Chamisa and one of his top lieutenants, Tendai Biti, and other opposition leaders implicated in post-election violence will next week be subpoenaed to give evidence before the commission of inquiry into the August 1 shootings, which left six dead and 24 others nursing gunshot injuries.
Ballistic and forensic experts have also been summoned to appear before the Kgalema Motlanthe-led commission, but it was not yet clear if Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga would be asked to testify in view of the recent High Court ruling implicating him in the deployment of soldiers who turned on unarmed civilians on the fateful day.
Secretary to the commission, Virginia Mabiza, said as the inquiry enters its penultimate stages that include public hearings, it would subpoena all people fingered by witnesses as having incited violence, both in pre- and post-election times.
“The commission will be subpoenaing all those who were implicated in inciting violence, pre- and post-election. The law empowers the commission to use legal instruments to bring these people before it so that they can answer to the allegations made against them,” she said.
Now that High Court Judge Mangota has publicly stated that it was VP Chiwenga who deployed the army, presumably with orders to shoot to kill it is only right the the Motlanthe Commission imperative that VP is given the opportunity to comment, if he chose to do so.
General Ancelom Nhamo Sanyatwe of the Presidential Guard, has appeared before the Commission already; he is the one who insisted the soldiers had their guns pointing at 45 degrees up in the air contrary to all the video and photographic evidence showing the guns were pointing at the protestors. It would be very helpful to get VP Chiwenga to confirm that he is the one who deployed General Sanyatwe and his unit.
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