THE government has reacted predictably and angrily to demands by a US Senator that it first answers questions on missing activist Itai Dzamara and the Gukurahundi massacres, before receiving aid from multilateral lenders.
Further, the Senator, Bob Corker, demanded that Zimbabwe should first show commitment to reform, if the US is to back plans by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to help the African country clear its arrears.
While we feel strongly about the US using its financial muscle and global position to elbow out smaller nations, we believe their demands are just and legitimate. President Robert Mugabe and his administration should not be allowed to have their cake and eat it too.
Mugabe’s 36-year-old reign has been fraught with allegations of human rights abuses and government excesses and no one has been brought to book.
At some point, surely, someone has to be accountable for the deaths of so many people in Zimbabwe’s very short history.
Mentioning the Gukurahundi massacres, where an estimated 20 000 people were killed, remains heresy and Mugabe cannot get away with offhandedly describing the killings as “a moment of madness”.
Restorative justice demands that an apology be made and people be allowed to grieve, something that survivors of the killings are yet to be afforded.
Mugabe set up two commissions to investigate the killings and decades later, those reports are yet to be made public.
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In yet another spine-chilling incident, in just over a month, Dzamara will have been missing for over a year and yet the government is mum on what it is doing about finding him as directed by the courts.
Zimbabwe’s Constitution protects the right to life and the right to protection by the State and the government should be doing all in its power to ensure he is found.
That Dzamara remains missing almost a year later should be a scar on the consciences of every government department tasked with securing the right to life and protection by the State and will always be a blight on Mugabe’s administration.
Other demands by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations are fairly straightforward and do not warrant government’s angry, rhetorical and reactionary response.
The committee called for the return to the rule of law, accountability in how diamond revenue is handled and the guarantee of a free Press, perfectly legitimate demands the opposition and civil society organisations have been making for years.
The question now is why government is so averse to levelling the playing field that anyone who makes demands for reform is seen as a regime change agent.
Is this a subtle admission from the authorities that they owe their positions to opaqueness and oppression and they frown on transparency?
Zimbabwe needs all the help it can get from the IMF, World Bank and AfDB, but the country needs to start by helping itself by being more accountable to its citizens and being transparent on how it runs its affairs.
