Some of the so-called war veterans are too young to have engaged in Zimbabwe's war of liberation and analysts say others constitute a “criminal element”, ran amok at the public hearing of the Human Rights Commission Bill. The Zanu (PF) thugs manhandled journalists and legislators in the august house.
The Speaker of the House of Assembly, Lovemore Moyo, has demanded firm-handed action against the thugs from the police. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has also loudly and consistently condemned them as economically ruinous and, for President Mugabe and Zanu (PF), politically suicidal.
For expressing this simple common sense, Moyo and Tsvangirai have been contemptuously dismissed as “puppets of white people”. They have been accused of advancing foreign interests and branded traitors and reactionary rabble-rousers.
Zanu (PF) administration secretary, Didymus Mutasa, has vowed to stand firmly behind the thugs.
“We will defend them. They are our members. Is it possible for someone to just leave their homes to go and beat up people at Parliament without being provoked?” Mutasa queried. “Why did they not beat up any other persons who were at Parliament?”
Zanu (PF) chief whip Joram Gumbo denies that the thugs were Zanu (PF) supporters.
"It was public hearing open to everyone and its unfair to blame Zanu (PF) for the violence. We as a party have nothing to do with what happened," Gumbo told The Zimbabwean.
But the Speaker is undeterred and has vowed to continue his campaign for police to act to put an end to the rampant lawlessness which scuttled the public hearing. He has been accused of pursuing a political agenda sympathetic to the opposition. But he says he has a national duty to save the country from complete destruction by its own government.
It is to state the obvious to say that everyone in the entire state machinery, from the President down to the lowest operatives in the CIO and the police force, knew that what was happening, though likely to bring short-term political benefits to its initiators, was not in the nation's best long-term interests.
But because they were moral weaklings, or simply did not want to upset the apple cart, or because they were genuinely mortified by the likely consequences of challenging the war veterans in their various forms, the authorities chose to do nothing about the disastrous situation.
The Speaker is outraged that the police have failed to rediscover their moral courage to act in a manner they were constitutionally obliged to have acted when the violence broke out in Parliament.
Moyo said it was absolutely imperative that police are seen not to vacillate in dealing with this matter. "The police need to act to maintain law and order soon," he said.
Henceforth, he said, the police should be seen to act with the firmness, resoluteness and singular purposefulness which characterised the force before it was weakened by partisan politicisation.
“As the Speaker of Parliament, I am also greatly concerned with the lack of security to such an extent Honourable Members of Parliament are beaten up and harassed at their own workplace,” Moyo said.
When the self-styled war veterans were first let loose to cow through the uncontrolled use of brute force, whole rural communities who battered into supporting Zanu (PF). Critics say Mugabe had created a monster he might never be able to control.
The level of lawlessness has long passed the mark where any Head of State, no matter how high the stakes of inaction, could afford not to order a crackdown to restore some semblance of sanity.
Police say there has been no report made against the war veterans and so cannot act without a report. And yet they have overzealously moved to arraign MDC officials even on flimsy charges.
Moyo says police's reasons for not moving against the bandits calling themselves war veterans, though totally unacceptable, were understandable.
Firstly, being on record as having euphemistically termed the terror campaign "peaceful demonstrations" when it started, suddenly turning against them would have been an acutely embarrassing volte face.
Secondly, of even greater concern was the prospect of being openly defied. Mugabe had already witnessed a dress rehearsal of the likely scenario. Mugabe has decreed that there were not to be any more violence. The self-styled war veterans responded by intensifying the crackdown against the MDC, sealing off the whole of Mbare through its Chjipangano militia. Mugabe simply could not risk being similarly defied.
Moyo says police must have a free hand. For police, says Moyo, the immediate challenge is to deal ruthlessly once and for all with the misguided war veterans. He says they will have the support of 12 million Zimbabweans.
Post published in: News