A few months ago, I became a surprise “visitor” at the police post at the Harare Magistrates’ Court at Rotten Row.
Saturday Dialogue with Phillip Chidavaenzi
My phone — which I had forgotten to put on silent mode as I followed proceedings in the trial of officials from former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s office — had rung.
As I went through the rituals of paying the fine at the police post, I got a rare chance to chat with one of the police officers who was quite curious about the modus operandi of journalists in the private media.
In the course of our conversation, the police officer made a striking remark that there was such a strong anti–police sentiment in this country.
I quickly volunteered — rather recklessly too — a reason: that it’s because almost the entire police system, rank and file, has become so rotten that it is no longer worthy of respect.
The police officer, perhaps unsettled by my frank opinion and the rather uncomfortable twist the conversation had suddenly taken, indicated in a not-so-obvious way that I was now wandering into a minefield fraught with pitfalls.
That brought the conversation, which had up until then been rather amicable, to an abrupt, inconclusive end.
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I remembered this encounter recently when I became an unwilling eyewitness of an incident in which a commuter omnibus that tried to flee baton–wielding police officers at the corner of Robert Mugabe Road and Mbuya Nehanda Street in Harare ran over an innocent elderly woman crossing the road.
Her only crime — if I can call it that — was crossing the road at a portion where traffic cops were engaged in turf wars with commuter omnibus crews.
Thankfully, her life was spared.
The two police officers, who had been involved in a cat–and–mouse chase with the commuter omnibus crews, tried to flee the incident by getting into a passing car.
The crowd, however, would have none of that and mobbed the car until the police officers got out and picked up the woman who was still lying in the road so they could take her to hospital.
In that same week, a man who was walking with his little son was run over by a kombi and died on the spot. I can imagine how that incident will haunt the young boy who helplessly watched his father dying. It can only be a horrific incident.
Prior to that incident, I had witnessed yet another one in which a commuter omnibus, trapped in a traffic jam, with the baton crew bearing down on it, made a sudden illegal U–turn and crossed demarcations between the roads as passengers screamed for their lives.
Many commuter omnibuses have shattered windscreens — marks of nasty encounters with overzealous police officers, that have resorted to “criminal” means of hitting back on the rather elusive kombis with whom they cannot keep pace when they try to effect an arrest for traffic law violations.
One, however, gets a feeling that the overzealous anger with which they have been breaking commuter omnibus windscreens has more to do with the general hardships of life they are experiencing rather than instilling discipline in commuter omnibus crews.
I have always wondered if the new method of traffic policing in this country is that when a driver of a vehicle tries to flee arrest, you shatter the windscreen of the vehicle.
Why not record the registration number and later follow up on the vehicles and get the drivers arrested? How is shattering a windscreen with a baton stick going to help apart from putting at risk the lives of innocent commuters?
But the overzealousness demonstrated by these police officers as they play to public gallery in their confrontations with commuter omnibus crews is quite strange — especially realising that these kombis will be having innocent passengers on board.
A few years ago, a daring police officer died a painful death after diving onto the door of a fleeing commuter omnibus, but unfortunately the door he was precariously holding onto got off its hinges.
After falling onto the tarmac, the door came crashing down on him, killing him instantly. When looked at in retrospect, it was not worth it.
Malicious injury to property, which is exactly what these cops are doing, is a criminal offence for which one can be successfully prosecuted under the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23. The injury to property, according to Professor Geoff Feltoe in the Criminal Law Guide (2005), includes destroying, permanently damaging, harming or rendering it unfit for use.
Feltoe contends that sometimes the culprit can go free if he mistakenly believed it was lawful to cause the damage. Perhaps the police capitalise on this.
But as this madness continues unabated, I think it is about time the individual police officers responsible for shattering kombi windscreens and endangering people’s life were brought to book.
