BY TAWANDA MAJONI
President Emmerson Mnangagwa was in St Marys, Chitungwiza, a few days ago. He was hollering to a good crowd of old and young people—some of them so small that they came in primary school uniform rather than party regalia—as he urged all of them to vote Zanu PF in yesterday’s by-elections.
Hmmm, he even said Zanu PF would win in that area. And he was quite passionate on that one, oh. You know the St Marys rastas now. They must have sneaked something under his scarf during the pre-rally briefing. I don’t trust those rastas. If you as little as wink at them, they will have a good excuse to get you sloshed on something.
Those rastas don’t waste their time on nothing. They don’t vote, of course. They just go around slouching and limping, very high on mutoriro, ganja and/or all the other bad stuff, but hardly cocaine that they can’t waste their thin pockets on. And, somehow, the president seemed to know of their doping habits, because he said something about it.
He said the St Marys rastas were among many Zimbabwean chaps who were abusing drugs or, at least, he had heard some people accusing them of such.
On a turn that must have surprised and even spooked the rastas, the president strongly warned the drug peddlers. He said, once caught, they would rot in jail for the rest of their lives. Every dope-taking rasta would quake at the prospect of the president being a magistrate. Who wants to rot in jail till the last breath?
You know what? Mnangagwa is a good fella when he himself is not high on something. When he is not passing around the “I am the Boss” mug at some party or meandering to the stage to auction a neck tie at State House. But even with some bit of leaf somewhere within his regalia, he remembers to blast dope takers, and that, at least, is a good thing to do.
Don’t worry remembering the other things. There is a good message coming from him on drugs. Just last month, the youth day that was run in commemoration of the birth of the late former president Robert Mugabe had an anti-drugs theme. From sometime last year, Mnangagwa has been nudging for a strong fight against drugs.
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That’s pretty encouraging—if not slightly contradictory—for someone who at one stage promised to turn all our pastures and maize fields into ganja land. Remember the time just after the coup?
The president was inspired. Haile Selassie inspiration. He wanted us to start producing marijuana. Whatever happened to that high idea is every owl’s guess.
I think I know where the president’s anti-drugs line is coming from. It’s not entirely untrue that he is a listening president. You see, there is this friend of mine. I’m not mentioning her name lest the name-dropping buddie gets too cocky on it.
She went up to meet the president sometime last year. She complained about how bad the dangerous drugs situation had become in Zimbabwe.
A few months later, the president was talking as if he had never threatened to turn all of us into a ganja tribe.
But who is complaining? My friend was absolutely right. Just imagine, 10 year olds are stealing money from their parents, blind grannies and everyone else just to get the kicks. That’s no bluff. Ask the experts, they will tell you young guys are going bonkers too fast in their lives because of drugs.
The mental hospitals are failing to cope and government is thinking of going to house the drug loons at Chikurubi Maximum Prison.
So, you need to stand up for the president for the anti-drugs campaign. But you don’t get the sense that he has a single idea about what is happening exactly. Very good, he threatened to unleash law enforcements agents on drug peddlers. That’s how a president must be talking. Easier said than done, though.
Outside the fact that the president’s anti-drugs campaign so far is just ad hoc, it seems no proper homework has been done to give the problem a good context. No effort has been made to establish why our ghettoes are fast turning into some N Monroe Street in Baltimore.
That there are drug lords throughout the country is no new knowledge. Growing up, you knew of Zakes in Mbare, Dotito in Highfields, Chaka in Mufakose, and so on. They were bad guys who supplied mbanje even to the comrades as they were just coming from the bush after the war.
They were feared and sometimes untouchable. The main difference then is that the cops would arrest them without fear or favour. At least most of the time.
Binga, Malawi, and all the remote places supplied the leaf. Then, you talked of isolated individuals who supplied mainly marijuana. With time, harder drugs like cocaine started trickling in from South Africa and beyond. These pushers targeted the wealthy ones and they were few and thin in-between.
Over the decades, though, more hard drugs came in. More mbanje was grown and more was pushed and smoked. Then came the main problem that we must be talking about now. The cartels. Because of increasing demand as people lost jobs, couldn’t find jobs and felt very sorry for themselves, the supply chain became more far-flung, more complicated and more robust.
The cops were fast losing speed against the pushers and consumers of drugs. That was also the time when things were getting really hard and salaries would only buy a bunch of vegetables, bits of cooking oil and the odd loaf of bread.
The cops were not spared. And that was the time when people in high places—the police and other security departments—were getting really greedly and a wee too corrupt.
There was a time when well-meaning police officers would go and arrest drug pushers and, before they could say “fall out” at the stand-down parade, the criminals were out. That time is still there.
How does that happen? The big chefs would have received their fat kickbacks from the criminals. Worse still, the arresting good-for-nothings would also be punished through transfers, cooked up charges and what not for doing their job.
Granted, you still get some of the drug pushers and takers getting arrested, prosecuted and convicted here and there, but those are small numbers.
The big fish cannot be touched. Point is, when Mnangagwa said pushers would be arrested and then sent to the cooler to rot, he might have not known that the very people who he assumes will do the arresting and prosecution will do it, if the frequent accounts you always get are going to be useful in this regard.
Big problem is, the law enforcers have become part of the syndicates. So, you get these cases whereby every new pusher must be initiated into the cartels by detectives from the drugs section. These are the very “chefs” who tell them what to do, where to go and how to go there and come back, and stay out of trouble.
You see, with this mutoriro thing, if you want to be a runner the pusher introduces you to some big guys at the narcotics section. You need to be in “constant touch” with them. They know all the contacts in South Africa. If you are going to travel Down South to get the stuff, these are the guys who will tell you who to meet, when and where.
If there are overzealous officers within the law enforcement agency or if there is a special operation against drug dealers, they will use certain codes to alert you so that keep out of trouble. This is what you always hear if you care to listen. To sum it up, the guards are part of the heist.
In that regard, it becomes futile to talk of doing anti-drug clampdowns.
The guards are the thieves, so you don’t go anywhere. What’s needed, therefore, is to start with an overhaul of how things are happening.
Change the systems first if you really are sincere with fighting a good drug war.
Get rid of the rot within the police force. Get rid of corrupt prosecutors. Get rid of corrupt magistrates who are being bribed by the drug cartels. That’s the only way.
- Tawanda Majoni is the national coordinator at Information for Development Trust (IDT) and can be contacted on [email protected]
