Tendai Ruben Mbofana
The surgery was necessitated by a severe injury she sustained on her leg allegedly after being savagely beaten up by police who raided the private residence of former legislator Jameson Timba.
Makororo, together with 78 other opposition supporters, were subsequently arrested as they gathered for peaceful private ‘Day of the African Child’ commemorations on 16 June 2024.
In spite of this gathering having been totally within the law and their section 58 constitutional right to assembly – the activists were charged for holding an unsanctioned gathering for the purposes of engaging in an unlawful demonstration.
Ever since their arrest, as has become the norm, they have been repeatedly denied their section 50 constitutional right to bail and are languishing in remand prison, including the injured Makororo.
As if this was not heinous enough, the President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa regime, on 29 June 2024, arrested five members of the NDWG (National Democratic Working Group) in Harare, who were merely engaged in a food distribution exercise targeted at the disadvantaged in society.
Again, the group was arrested for ostensibly conducting an unsanctioned gathering and inciting criminal acts across the country.
Is giving food to the less privileged now deemed as ‘inciting criminal acts’?
The NDWG is led by outspoken former legislator Job Sikhala – who, himself, endured nearly 600 days of pre-conviction detention – after being repeatedly denied bail by the courts.
Sikhala, who has been arrested 68 times by the ZANU PF junta, was subsequently found guilty for violating a non-existent law.
Section 31(a) (iii) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act [Chapter 9:23] – publishing and communicating false statements prejudicial to the State – was struck off the statute books by the Constitutional Court way back in October 2013.
However, under the Mnangagwa regime, a law that does not exist can still be used to convict a person of a crime!
The same fate faced another opposition leader, Jacob Ngarivhume, who was arrested and sentenced to an effective three years in jail for allegedly inciting public violence without a single piece of prima facie evidence.
Fortunately, his conviction and sentence were eventually overturned by the High Court after appeal in December 2023.
However, not before he had already spent eight months behind bars.
In all these arrests, it is undeniable that the Mnangagwa administration has, in actual fact, effectively barred all opposition gatherings of any nature.
This is not to mention peaceful demonstrations, which are guaranteed in section 59 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe.
Anyone who calls for peaceful demonstrations is viciously cracked down upon, under the pretext of ‘incitement of public violence’, regardless of the lack any evidence to substantiate these claims.
The ZANU PF regime has never sanctioned an opposition or perceived anti-government demonstration ever since Mnangagwa took over power through a military coup d’état in November 2017.
As a matter of fact, opposition campaign rallies have been frequently barred under the most ridiculous reasons, even during an election season.
This was quite evident before the August 2023 harmonized elections – a fact captured and reported by various election observer missions, including the regional body SADC.
As it turned out, the same report flagged the flagrant disregarding of Zimbabwe’s laws and regional principles and guidelines governing democratic elections by the Mnangagwa administration.
Voters, largely in rural areas, were frog-marched to polling stations and forced to vote for the ruling party – with widespread intimidation and violence being the order to the day in the pre-election period.
As if to validate these unashamed repressive tendencies, the Commander of the ZNA (Zimbabwe National Army) General Anselem Sanyatwe, recently threatened the nation that in order for ZANU PF to ‘rule until donkeys grow horns’, the military junta would implement what the termed ‘command voting’.
Whilst still on the issue of intimidation of mostly rural folk, reports are awash of traditional leaders in some parts of Zimbabwe denying suspected opposition supporters food aid.
This is cold-heartedness of the worst kind – especially considering that the country is in the grip of one of the most devastating droughts in recent memory – where 7 million Zimbabweans face hunger.
How can a government led by people with a soul play politics with human life?
Even our colonial masters never treated us in this evil manner.
As I was reading Makororo’s harrowing ordeal, I could not help wondering whether even reviled Rhodesia leader Ian Douglas Smith ever subjected innocent civilians to such horrendous repression.
The only incidents recorded by history where some acts of what could be termed ‘barbaric and cruel’ were committed was during the height of the liberation struggle.
All these incidents could be argued as having been against insurgency.
I am sure that even today, if anyone dared undertake the same activities witnessed during the armed struggle against the Zimbabwe government, they would spend the rest of their naturals in prison, if they were not killed.
Yet, in stark contrast with the situation in Rhodesia, in supposed ‘independent Zimbabwe’, we are not at war, by whatever definition.
Nonetheless, before and outside the liberation war, there were hardly any reports of ordinary citizens being arrested and even jailed by the colonial regime for not committing any crime.
Nothing can ever justify the cruelty ordinary Zimbabweans are facing under the Mnangagwa junta.
Surely, who, in Rhodesia, ever heard of a mother, with a baby strapped on her back, being arrested and thrown in remand prison, yet without having broken any laws at all?
Is this not what happened to one of the 79 opposition activists arrested on 16 June – whose baby is reported to have died in remand prison and the mother denied permission to attend the funeral?
Then, you hear these people in power repeatedly reminding us that they ‘liberated Zimbabwe’!
Even in their own twisted minds, do they honestly view Zimbabweans today as ‘liberated’?
There is no way Rhodesians could have been more cruel than the Mnangagwa regime!
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/