THE revelations this week by the Research and Advocacy Unit (Rau) that at least 70 000 trained teachers fled the country due to politically motivated violence between 2000 and 2008 is not only shocking, but exposes our deliberate failure to arrest impunity since independence which is now breeding political intolerance and violence.
NewsDay Editorial
In a report titled Fragility and education in Zimbabwe: Assessing the impact of violence on education, Rau said the education sector was under siege as violence is already rearing its ugly head ahead of elections which should be held before the end of June next year.
The report claimed that the 70 000 teachers fled violence that was State-sponsored.
This is a hugely damning indictment on the part of our leaders and security forces.
The report exposes us as a nation averse to political differences and which strongly believes in crushing dissent through violence, not ideology or a sellable manifesto.
Zimbabweans should be a worried lot. If our rulers fail to embark on real political, media, legislative and security reforms as espoused in the Global Political Agreement, the country will slide back to the dark days of 2008 when the army, the police, war veterans and the Zanu PF youth militia unleashed an orgy of violence against perceived enemies of President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF.
Farm and rural schools were turned into torture bases for perceived MDC supporters. The MDC-T claims that over 200 of its supporters were killed and thousands maimed and displaced during the violent campaign to ensure Mugabe retained the presidency by hook or crook. What was, and still is worrying about the 2008 episode is that the perpetrators of the violence still roam the streets and villages of Zimbabwe scot free.
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No one has been brought to book for their nefarious actions.
This impunity does not act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators of violence. It is a catalyst, a stimulant of political violence. We challenge Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, his deputy Arthur Mutambara and MDC leader Welshman Ncube to ensure urgent security sector reforms.
We need a security force which is apolitical and professional to deal with impunity.
Speaking from ivory towers like Mugabe has been doing of late against violence will not end the scourge. Perpetrators of political violence in 2008 should have been brought to book as a demonstration of intolerance of violence.
This can only happen if we first reform the police because it occupies the legal as well as the military and paramilitary domains, and thus has much greater daily interaction with the public than do the other security institutions.
Among the reforms should be the encouragement for better civilian-police relations through improved community policing; upholding the Police Code of Conduct, that is ignored, and the reorganisation and retraining of the force.
