Last Saturday, a mob chanting Zanu PF slogans stormed into Parliament, disrupted proceedings and beat up an MP, a journalist and roughed up a visiting South African pastor, who was passing by – just because of his white skin.
Predictably, there was excuse after excuse, denial after denial following the violence. The police claimed they were caught unawares and did not have the manpower to arrest the hooligans.
But this week they swiftly moved in to arrest 13 MDC-T members who were protesting outside the High Court over the continued holding in remand prison and prosecution of fellow party activists accused of killing a police officer.
Would one be said to be wrong if one saw persecution and victimisation since the MDC-T members were demonstrating peacefully as opposed to the Zanu PF mob, and arrests are still to be made despite the fact that the culprits are clearly identifiable from pictures in newspapers and the police could have made on-the-spot arrests of at least some of them?
For how long shall we have this mindless violence? We don’t need vindictive politics where adults act like children with ordinary Zimbabweans and visitors getting caught up in this as collateral damage.
Some of this violence is borne out of total ignorance.
Said Makonde MP Rusipa Kapesa (Zanu PF) about the mayhem that surrounded the Human Rights Commission Bill hearing at Parliament: “The Bill is a very sensitive one because it deals with the well-being of people and that is why some of the people do not even understand that the Bill was brought by Justice and Legal Affairs minister Patrick Chinamasa (Zanu PF) and they were misconstruing what is currently in the Bill and saying it removed the powers of the President.”
So their anger, if any, was clearly misplaced. Now it becomes dangerous when these obviously intellectually-challenged people posture as constitutional experts.
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You can’t legislate for every bit of human weakness or deficiency, but it’s no pleasure to talk or deal with such people. It becomes worse when they have political pretensions whereas they will be doing the bidding of someone cloistered in high office.
Freedom of association is a constitutional matter and a fundamental right, but not the ugly and gratuitous violence witnessed inside and outside Parliament last Saturday. In a true democracy, people are allowed to advance diverse and conflicting causes and can demonstrate as long as they are peaceful.
It’s the accompanying violence that the people object to. Campaigners who strongly support or object to aspects of government policy should be allowed to demonstrate in accordance with their rights whereas here violent demonstrations are engineered and spread.
“Democracy is not the obligation to like, but the freedom to dislike.” But the tradition of peaceful protest has never been accepted here. It is the tragedy of our time that those who zero in on genuine issues of conscience — pointing out ills like incompetence and corruption and doing that peacefully — are routinely descended upon with a sledgehammer while violent, ignorant, amoral loonies and crazies are given free rein instead of being rounded up to face stiff penalties, including criminal and civil suits. If the politicians behind these ruffians would put themselves in everybody else’s shoes, they would stop holding out and help people. They need to stop messing with people’s lives.
Yes, we have a political class willing to exercise brinkmanship while the economy is collapsing all around us — as they did over the civil service salary issue – which has a lot within it the seeds of illegal behaviour.
But the majority of voters don’t care anymore what Zanu PF has to say right now, whereas Zanu PF is still believing that the “naughty voters” just made an awful mistake and they will return if they can just show them that it is their side of the government which effected the civil service salary increment. They will hang on to power even if it results in the death of the nation.
They have invested too much in the system and are accountable to other powerful forces that propelled them to power.
This is corrupt and self-serving politics. But they can’t hide the pervasive decline of the past decade to make Zanu PF more electable. There is need to balance political ambition with moral sense.
That said, the State media has been most unhelpful in all this. They exaggerate or understate issues because they want a certain outcome — or are guided so.
They couldn’t bring themselves to state unequivocally and specifically that a Zanu PF mob had caused mayhem in the august House.
The Herald has been running full-page advertisements with a thinly-veiled attack on NewsDay which read as follows: “No half truth for half price — $1 for the full story — The Herald”; and “Read The Herald . . . No distortions, no compromise.”
Early this week, the paper’s headline “Parties’ differences disrupt Bill hearing” was the lowest point.
Was this mere disruption when an MP and several journalists, including those from the State media, were manhandled and assaulted? Now who is spinning news here?
The Herald advert proclaiming “There is only ONE leading newspaper in the country that tells the truth as it is” does not tally with their reportage of the violence at Parliament. No wonder they are fast-losing ground in the market.
The saving grace is that ordinary people can see through all these lies – and they are increasingly coming to the realisation that anything the political class is so deadly against must be good for the people as a whole. People are ahead of the politicians.
They know what they want.
Over the years, some of my best mates have been poles apart from me politically, but we could discuss issues without anger and understand differences. This helps one to get a sense of balance.
People in influential positions should “tell the truth as it is” regarding the loonies and crazies who caused mayhem at Parliament last week and speak the truth to power — which State media editors have failed to do. [email protected]
