A case in point is the recent police action against the Counselling Services Unit. The CSU has been counselling and offering healing to victims of our alarmingly violent situation.
Our police force is already in a state of rebellion against our elected government and this action seems designed to inspire fear in their opponents. Many have already been seriously injured but they haven’t been crushed yet. I suppose the staff of the CSU knew the risk they were running. They could only have taken that risk because they believe in helping anyone who suffers injury, even if the perpetrators are known to disregard the demands of international law and of basic humanity.
We have heard stories of people who were injured by the political thugs being pursued to hospital by gangs who wanted to finish them off there. Some tell of being whisked quietly out the back door of a hospital while staff tried to delay the thugs who were breaking in at the front door. The CSU must have heard more of these stories.
What do the perpetrators of this crime think they are doing? Destroying evidence of their misdeeds? Don’t they know that the first principle of counselling is confidentiality?
Whatever a counsellor hears from a client, s/he may not repeat it to anyone without the client’s permission. Any evidence that a counsellor may have in his or her files must stay there. The one who will testify is the one who suffered the injury.
Maybe they want to remind us that ZANU, CIO, Chipangano, Green Bombers, the army and the police will disregard the most basic laws of war and principles of humanity when they like. The first of these principles is protection for the injured and respect for those who care for them.
If those forces of darkness are planning another election campaign as bloody as the last one, they are warning us that they know most of the safe houses where their victims took shelter last time and they do not intend to respect them.
If this isn’t their plan, they won’t easily convince us. Their victims remember hearing statements from the top against violence in previous elections, but also remember how little they meant. Peace was the message – to certain audiences – but the armed cohorts and party faithful got a different message the same day. The Old Man preaches peace more often now; I would like to believe that he means it, but how can we be sure this isn’t just another trick?
If he meets with doubt outside his own ranks, what will his thugs be thinking? They want to believe that when he talks peace he is lying – as they themselves would. If he really wants peace, he has a mammoth task. Maybe he does see that hondo isingaperi means bloodshed until the last descendant of Cain slits his only surviving brother’s throat. But if he wants to change, how could he convince anybody he is sincere? And could he persuade his party’s strong-arm men to obey any order so different from what they have followed for the past 40 years?
They might begin to believe him if they were given a serious warning. For example he could ensure that Jim Kunaka is brought to court, sentenced and punished for his crimes. Those of us who are less bloodthirsty would be satisfied if the observed all the terms of the GPA he signed in 2008 and which provides the only justification for his claim to be President.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis