This is your responsibility

ctims: she is a widowed grandmother in her early fifties, without any political ambitions. She is solely preoccupied with feeding and keeping her family alive. Some weeks ago she was about to board a commuter bus in town to go back to her high-density suburb when the police was chasing some NCA members. Since she was talking to one of them she was detained like the rest. At the central police station they were taken to a secluded spot and systematically, cruelly beaten up. She passed out and woke up in hospital. She underwent an operation and, though now back home, is still not fully recovered. She hobbles about her house and yard, but has not ventured any further yet.
This was not just a freak accident or the result of some “over-enthusiasm”. This revealed the attitude of the authorities towards the common people. Anyone is a potential enemy. They beat them first and ask questions later. They have no respect for the people, no concern for their welfare, no sense of responsibility for the common good. Even after almost three decades they have not unlearned the violence and aggression that became ingrained habits in the bush war, instead they are passing them on to the new generation.
We are told that there are some quite “decent” people in the ruling party who would never do a thing like that. Yes, but they let others do it in their name. If they are really so “decent” then they should distance themselves from such inhumanity, go and apologize to this grandmother who may be a fellow church member, and pay compensation (not that money can really make up for the deep humiliation and suffered!).
The Catholic Bishops are well aware of the situation: “In Zimbabwe today, there are Christians on all sides of the conflict; and there are many Christians sitting on the fence….They are all baptised, sit and pray and sing together in the same church…While the next day, outside the church, a few steps away, Christian state agents, policemen and soldiers assault and beat peaceful, unarmed demonstrators and torture detainees. This is the unacceptable reality on the ground, which shows much disrespect for human life and falls far below the dignity of both the perpetrator and the victim” (ZCBC, Easter Pastoral Letter, ‘God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed’, n. 3).
There is a fundamental flaw in our republic, some basic fault of design. We need to go back to the drawing board. For the State “the common good of its people is the whole meaning of its existence,” the Bishops said on the eve of Independence 1980. The primacy of the common good over all other considerations of power and sectional interests has never been realised in this country.
Things went wrong right at the start. “Soon after Independence, the power and wealth of the tiny white Rhodesian elite was appropriated by an equally exclusive black elite, some of whom have governed the country for the past 27 years through political patronage. Black Zimbabweans today fight for the same basic rights they fought for during the liberation struggle” (ZCBC, Easter 2007, n.18).
Sometimes we see on ZTV historical film clips of Rhodesian policemen with Alsatians chasing and beating Blacks. Ask that grandmother whether she sees any difference between being beaten by a Rhodesian or a Zimbabwean policeman.
“We call on those who are responsible for the current crisis in our country to repent and listen to the cry of their citizens” (ZCBC, Easter 2007, n. 26). Repentance means a change of heart, a complete turn-around, a new way of thinking and acting.
We need a new constitution which spells out human rights and gives courts the authority to enforce them, and stops the abuse of power by never giving anyone unlimited power. But even more is needed: a new attitude towards our fellow citizens, respect for their dignity as persons, as human beings ‘created in the image of God’.
Was not this what so deeply humiliated the people as owners of the land that they were not given this respect by the ‘settlers‘? Was not this what exasperated them to such an extent that they opted for armed resistance? And what they craved has still not been achieved if you ask that woman in her pain!
Those “responsible for the current crisis in our country” will of course try to justify themselves by blaming Britain, the western powers, ‘imperialists and neo-colonialists’ and their alleged interference in our economy (e.g. ”sanctions”). We can only say to them: please grow up, become real, don’t lie to yourselves and us. If police are cruelly beating up harmless passers-by (or even democratic activists) as a matter of intimidation and terror, that has nothing to do with foreign “imperialism“. This is your responsibility and nobody else’s. – Oskar Wermter SJ