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NewsDay

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Electoral bloodbath: Broken limbs beckon

Opinion & Analysis
There is a very real danger that Zimbabwe may this year be plunged once again into another very violent and bloody election.

There is a very real danger that Zimbabwe may this year be plunged once again into another very violent and bloody election.

Landscape with Tangai Chipangura

The writing — bold and screaming — is there on the wall. Why would we have very senior officials of Zanu PF, including Minister of State for National Security Sydney Sekeramayi and Defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, openly declare that they will not allow security sector reforms before elections?

This is in spite of an agreement — written and signed by their party leader President Robert Mugabe, MDC-T leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and the other MDC party.

The agreement, contained in the Election Roadmap that the parties shaped together under the guidance of Sadc, was reached as a way to avoid electoral bloodshed — to avoid a repeat of the “smart genocide” witnessed in 2008 when the military and other security arms were accused of assisting Zanu PF in unleashing political violence of industrial proportions.

There is no doubt such an agreement exists — an agreement that there should be security sector and other reforms to enable peaceful, free and fair elections. What is frightening, therefore, is the open refusal by the security ministers to allow these reforms.

Sekeramayi said: “That is nonsense . . . we are saying that to all intents and purposes, it’s a lot of nonsense — we will not accept it . . . nobody should tell us to do security sector reform, security sector alignment and that type of rubbish. That will not be done.”

The minister reportedly said this at the weekend. Not many days earlier, Defence minister Mnangagwa had said the same thing — denying the fact that security reforms were part of any agreement — including the Global Political Agreement whose outstanding issues he chose to outline solely as the removal of sanctions and the closure of pirate radio stations.

Commanders that fall under these security ministers have said more frightful things, clearly indicative of the dreadful fact that there is going to be bloodshed if so much as remote signs that their political party of choice may be headed for defeat are seen.

It does not matter how much Tsvangirai may want to play the good and forgiving friend and say in public statements like: “Peace has never been given so much attention in this country before,” referring (at Chinhoyi this weekend) to Mugabe’s recent consistent peace-preaching — he should simply not get lost to the reality that he may be blindly walking into a pit of fire where many more thousands of his followers will be consumed.

What is it that Tsvangirai has been told to make him so confident this country will not see another bloodbath if we went to elections while armed soldiers are out of the barracks and roam the cities and the countryside carrying out political orders?

Why would it be important for Sadc to insist that such reforms be put in place if they had no bearing on the safety of the electorate and security of the vote?

The levels of violence, bloodshed and mayhem that characterised Zimbabwe in 2008, acknowledged by senior police officers who officiated at the ZRP Harare Province Community Policing campaigns at Huruyadzo shopping centre in St Mary’s, Chitungwiza, at the weekend, made Zimbabwe an outpost of tyranny, just below a rogue State in an axis of evil.

Zimbabweans would rather carry on with this dysfunctional and inherently corrupt government than try to change it by enduring another June 2008! So many people were brutalised — others killed — at torture bases that are still out there; only waiting to be reactivated.

There is no spontaneity to this evil — it is carefully planned, plotted and directed with military precision from above and executed with the aid of military elements that the ministers are refusing to have reformed!

It is naïve — in fact, outright silly — for parties such as the MDC-T to issue, as Douglas Mwonzora sought to do at the weekend, barren threats of retaliation if attacked by those that have guns! Lest you forget, Douglas, sometime in 2000 when Zanu PF got a rude electoral awakening, Nathan Shamuyarira, one of the party’s godfathers, said these words: “The area of violence is an area where Zanu PF has a strong, long and successful history.”

We do not want more shattered limbs and broken lives — blooded bodies taken to clinics in wheelbarrows — like billboards advertising the gruesome consequences of opposition politics!

The ballot box may appear to be the final determinant to the MDC-T – but for Zanu PF the ballot can only be final if it endorses them!