THE case involving President Robert Mugabe’s neighbour Michael Pazarangu (55) has finally been concluded after he was on Monday ordered to pay $50 by Friday or serve a 30-day jail term for unleashing his dogs on wildlife at the first family’s residence.
NEWSDAY EDITORIAL
Interestingly, Pazarangu was convicted on his own plea of guilty for allowing his dogs to roam freely into Mugabe’s private residence in Borrowdale in Harare where they killed a bush buck on May 22 this year.
The question really is: Was pursuing the legal route through the courts the appropriate remedy? One is tempted to think that this was probably not the best of options given the sheer waste of State resources. An out-of-court settlement could perhaps have sufficed.
Zimbabweans will also curiously want to find out how much it cost the government in trying Pazarangu at a time the country’s economy is faltering.
And Mugabe must be embarrassed by the way his handlers dealt with the case given that this is his neighbour who, in all intents and purposes, did not voluntarily unleash his dogs on Zimbabwe’s First Citizen.
By all means, what ought to have been done was simply to withdraw the case before plea so as not to soil the President’s “good name”. The country would want to believe that whoever decided to arrest the owner of the dogs in their wisdom or lack thereof might have missed the point instead.
It is true that the President could not have made a complaint against Pazarangu in the name of good neighbourliness.
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Besides, it must be noted that the facts in the matter sounded incredulous. The President’s neighbour did not unleash the dogs on the animals!
The dogs simply found an opening in the perimeter fence separating the two properties and saw some game inside. And of course, the dogs did what any predator would have done.
Now that the court case is water under the bridge after its finalisation, those responsible for security at the President’s property should now explain to the nation why there was an opening in the perimeter fence in the first place.
Who was responsible for checking it? Why had it not been fixed on time? How safe is the President if an opening at his residence can take long to be fixed? What if the intruder weren’t just Pazarangu’s dogs?
So, instead of the police laying the blame on Pazarangu, those responsible for manning the property should have shouldered part of the blame for not noticing the hole in the perimeter fence.
There is nothing to suggest that Pazarangu had run-ins with the law and that because of just this incident, he was a nuisance or security threat to the President. This is absurd!
The country will always wonder what benefit this incident brought the nation, apart from putting the country on the world map for all the wrong reasons.
This implies that all those who live in the President’s vicinity and own dogs will now live in the fear that should their dogs breach their own security walls and wander into the First Citizen’s property, then they are also going to be in trouble with the law.
