EDITOR - In The Zimbabwean of 3rd September you reported savage cruelty to new police recruits intended to brutalise them. The question inevitably arises of how to eliminate such behaviour from our police. The first step is to understand it. The journalist noted that senior officers watching the beatings were obviously enjoying it. No doubt the men doing the caning were also enjoying it. Such excitement, called sadism, is always sexual. Occasionally it is done to women, but it is generally done by men to men, usually young men. The pleasure is homosexual.
Concealed homosexuality is quite common in senior police and army officers, which is why they were drawn to work in all-male environments.
Like the cruelty in your article, much torture centres on buttocks and genitals, as one would expect. Repeated exposure of these obvious facts would do more to stop these practices than anything else. Shame is very powerful. If people nudge one another and grin knowingly when they hear of another policeman’s perversion, they would bite deep. S. SIBANDA, by e-mail