Siziba is alleged to have assaulted Ziyambi on February 13 in Harare over differences relating to the control of the PG’s office. The allegations are set out in a report that Ziyambi made to the police, but which I hear was “recalled” under unclear circumstances.
Siziba’s secondment to the PG’s offices sits uneasily. Granted, government departments can and maybe should exchange personnel now and then. This must be based on the principle of organisational complementarity, whereby one department critically needs the expertise and experience of staff members from another department, and also for staff development.
For instance, the Civil Protection Unit (CPU) can look to the army for officers who would help with advice on military interventions in disaster management. The officers would also help in coordinating military activities, communication and other processes during disasters.
However, military secondments raise eyebrows when there is no obvious evidence that the officers are necessary to the functioning of the department to which they have been seconded. What justification is there to second a full colonel to the prosecutor general’s office?
He or she is a senior officer who is bound to claim sway in the way the affairs at that office are run. In other words, the colonel, naturally, goes to the PG’s office as a high ranking manager whose presence would inevitably influence policy and operations. That appears to be the main reason why there were sharp differences between Siziba and Ziyambi.
The case would be different for relatively junior officers who would play a purely coordinating role, if at all that is needed. But is there any justification for seconding military personnel to the judicial system in the first place? Shouldn’t the PG’s office, as in the case of the AG’s office, the courts and the bench, be run and manned purely by people who have expertise and skills regarding the interpretation of the law?
The secondment of Siziba was sinister. Looking back at Zanu (PF) politics over the decades, the militarisation of state institutions has been a definite strategy used to preserve President Robert Mugabe and his party’s power. This leaves the possibility that Siziba and the other high ranking soldiers named in Ziyambi’s police report were seconded to the prosecutorial unit to intimidate and influence staff as well as to ensure that Zanu (PF) interests were preserved and sustained. The presence of the military in the judiciary is counterproductive as it begets suspicion, discomfort and conflict.
Siziba has not done badly in that regard. His reported assault on Ziyambi, is likely to force her into a shell of self-censorship. He and other senior officers could have been seconded to the PG’s office to protect the interests of a clique of securocrats. This is not surprising considering that the military fat cats are not very clean people.
They have criminally accumulated largesse that they wanted protected at all costs. They are guilty of human rights abuses and high profile criminal cases buzz around them like green flies. They therefore need at least one of them to ensure the cupboard flaps remain tightly in place lest the skeletons fly out.
I am forced to speculate that Constantine Chiwenga had the cheek last year to use soldiers to haunt his former wife, Jocelyn, out of the family properties in contravention of the law as he knew nothing would happen to him because he had a buffer in the judiciary. He married another wife even before the divorce case was finalised and nothing has happened to him. Soldiers have been assaulting innocent civilians with impunity and some of them have been named in abduction, torture and even murder.
But then, as already mentioned, militarisation has become a culture in Mugabe’s respective Zanu (PF) governments. Soldiers now work for the agriculture ministry apparently to protect ill-gotten farms and equipment. This is despite the fact that the officers seconded there have no idea about farming outside invading farms. Almost all parastatals are run by soldiers at the expense of efficiency, effectiveness and viability. We even have soldiers involved in college and university affairs in one way or another. At this rate we will end up with soldiers running our crèches and churches.
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Post published in: Analysis