Minister Mutasa says police using Rhodesian tactics

By Lance Guma

The personal nature of the feud pitting Presidential Affairs Minister Didymus Mutasa against Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri blew out into the open this week, when Mutasa accused the police force including its chief of employing brutal Rhodesian tactics to settle personal scores.

Mutasa’s 47 year old son Martin was arrested alongside notorious ZANU PF activist Themba Mliswa and George Marere last week Monday, after trying to seize shareholding worth US$1 million from a company owned by white businessman Paul Westwood. Mutasa, in the company of new MDC-T co-Home Affairs Minister Theresa Makone, is said to have tried to intimidate police into releasing his son.

Speaking to the Daily News online edition, Mutasa said Chihuri and his officers were abusing the state apparatus to harass his son Martin and nephew Mliswa. The Minister claimed that the dispute over the company shares was a civil matter. “It looks like we are back to Rhodesia where Ian Smith used a similar law to abuse innocent people. Look, this is a clear civil matter which has been criminalized by some top police officers to pursue personal interests.’

Mutasa also claimed Chihuri had an interest in the company that was at the centre of the dispute. Although Martin and his colleagues were granted US$400 bail each, the state invoked the notorious Section 121 of the “Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act” to keep them locked up for another seven days. This further infuriated Mutasa who said: “That section must be there for correct usage not this kind of behaviour. Even if it was not my son involved I would have complained.”

By “correct usage” Mutasa probably meant that the law must be used only on perceived opponents of the ZANU PF regime. The same section of the law has been used countless times to keep activists locked up even when bail has been granted by the courts. Mutasa needs no reminding that the filthy conditions in the holding cells where his son is being kept are the very same conditions that people opposed to his ZANU PF regime are kept.

So how did MDC-T co-Home Affairs Minister Theresa Makone become embroiled in all this? “Minister Makone happened to be there and she was concerned that police machinery was now being used to fight business wars. She went to the police station on her own to find out exactly how this so called top person was trying to abuse the system. Actually, when I went to the police station I found her already there,” Mutasa claimed.

“She never demanded the release of anybody. I also never did that. All I did was to encourage the police to take my son and Mliswa to court and not to keep detaining them in a filthy police station over a civil matter. In this cold, they were sleeping without blankets and half naked,” charged Mutasa. Other reports say the two ministers are related.

Political commentator Sanderson Makombe expressed shock at the involvement of Makone in the whole saga. Makombe, who survived a ZANU PF assassination attempt in the 2000 parliamentary elections, said he never thought he would see the day an MDC Minister tried to help secure the release of a ZANU PF minister’s son from prison. Both Ministers erred in visiting the police station to make their complaints because they would only meet junior officers there and this in turn would be viewed as intimidation Makombe said. SW Radio Africa

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