Junior police officers also revealed that on Friday morning, their officer commanding Bulawayo province, Senior Assistant Commissioner Lee Muchemwa, barred them from talking to The Zimbabwean reporter, Mxolisi Ncube, whom he accused of writing negatively about the government.”We know that some of you support the opposition and are busy feeding the foreign press with information on what is going on in the police. There is one reporter with The Zimbabwean whom you continue to feed with the information so that he writes his negative stories, but that will not work,” Muchemwa is said to have said, while addressing Constables at Ross Camp.
The junior police officers, who were between Wednesday and Friday hurled to pro-Zanu (PF) “mini-rallies” meant to drum up support for Mugabe, civilian leader of the military junat currently ruling Zimbabwe, also alleged that their bosses ordered them to register for postal ballots whether they were registered with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) or not, after allegedly revealing that the electoral body was also part of the “grand plan” to revive Mugabe’s waning political fortunes.The meetings were presided over by Muchemwa and one of his deputies, Cornelius Muzeza, who is in charge of administration in the province.
Although Muchemwa’s status is not known, Muzeza is said to be a former liberation war soldier who fought in the country’s liberation war, which eventually brought independence from Britain in 1980, and brought Mugabe into power.
Muzeza, like other senior police officers, is also a beneficiary of the government’s chaotic land reform program, where he received one of the farms parcelled out by Mugabe to security chiefs.He is also one of the senior police officers who were seconded to the United Nations peace keeping missions, when he went to Sudan a few years ago, and made known his reasons for wanting Mugabe to remain in power.
“They (bosses) said that we should not worry about not being registered for the elections because ZEC new about and was part of the grand plan. Assistant Commissioner Muzeza said that we should all vote for Mugabe because the situation has now become a war. He also accused us of being sell-outs and said that during the liberation war, sell-outs were brought before a firing squad and shot,” said another junior police officer.
The junior police officers also revealed that their bosses had told them that the ZEC would bring postal ballot papers to all police officers in the province, who are said to be around 3 000, even though some of them did not register.”They said that they would make sure that all of us vote for Mugabe by opening the papers,” said one junior police officer.All the junior officers were also ordered to bring their spouses for registration and “thorough lecture”, which was scheduled to take place in Ross Camp on Saturday.
A senior police officer in the city also confirmed the directive, which he said had come from the police headquarters in Harare on Monday.”We were told to do this and that it has been done in all uniformed forces around the country. There is no way the juniors can escape the detection of their ballots, whose serial numbers will be written against their names on the nominal rolls. The same thing happaned in 2002 and those that voted otherwise were summoned to a hearing in Harare,” said the senior police officer.
This is not the first time that police chiefs have ordered their juniors to vote Mugabe in postal ballots that are held in the absence of poll monitors and polling agents.In 2002, the same method was used, while some junior police officers in Matabeleland North claimed that they were forced to sing the Zimbabwean national anthem, as a way of showing their allegiance to Mugabe, before voting.However, some junior officers have vowed that they will not toe the line, accusing Mugabe of causing their suffering through paying them “peanuts” despite using them to cling onto power.”If they want to shoot, let them do so, but they should know that we outnumber them. I would rather spoil my ballot than vote Mugabe,” said a Constable based at a station in Bulawayo.No comment could be obtained from police chief spokesman, Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena.
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