Who Beat Up Trudy?

R>There are three possibilities: they were sent by the leaders of the main branch of the MDC, or they were paid agents of Zanu (PF) or they were unwitting agents of Zanu (PF).
I find the first hard to believe. Even after what we have seen happening in the NCA, I have more trust than that in the integrity of the leadership of either faction of the MDC. The leaders may not be able to control their followers completely, but that is another question which I will deal with later.
The second doesn’t seem likely, either. Zanu (PF) members are not all stupid. They know that a willing ally is better than a paid agent, which is really only another name for a mercenary. I feel they would avoid anything this crude if they could find an alternative that serves their purpose.
My bet is on the third alternative. We have an atmosphere of violence. That being so, it would be surprising if any organisation was completely free of people with violent tendencies. If Zanu (PF) has done anything beyond creating that atmosphere of violence, it might use subtle means such as making sure that some of the assailants’ drinking companions plant ideas about who to attack when those assailants have drunk enough for the violence bottled up inside them to start bubbling to the surface. Actually, it would be truer to say they found an atmosphere of violence, learned to play that game more effectively than Smith’s gang and emerged with ‘degrees in violence’.
A member of the former ZAPU, said recently about the political violence of earlier times: “Yes, we all did it. That is what the situation drove us to.” That man is one of the least likely among all my acquaintances to believe violence solves anything, but he admits that there were situations in the past where “we all did it” and he was carried along by that tide of violence. Who can guarantee that he or she won’t be carried by the next surge of that tide? Could we expect the MDC leaders to be able to discipline their followers?
That is the real evil that faces us daily now. We have been hating our opponents for 40 years or more until we all became uncomfortably like what we hated. Yes, violence is ‘the Zanu way’ but they didn’t start it and it doesn’t end with them. It is a poison in the air we breathe.
Of course we must demand that those who are guilty of murder, arson, torture and rape repent and make what reparation they can, but we persuade them better if we show we are concerned that they have made themselves into evil people and we want to help them overcome that evil. If we set out to grind them down in revenge, we would become like them and what good would that do?
Remember the wise words of Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind.”