More likely Zanu PF killed Inspector Mutedza
By Tallent Chingovo
The gruesome murder of one Inspector Petros Mutedza in Glenview has generated a lot of interest and sparked some debate in both media and political circles. Mutedza an infamous ZANU PF functionary masquerading as a police officer was brutally killed in Glenview by ‘unknown assailants’.
However, before investigations begun, the police through their spokesperson rushed to announce and falsely accuse MDC-T members of murdering Mutedza. As I write this piece MDC-T MP for Glenview and member of the National Executive Committee Hon Last Maengahama together with other MDC-T activist were rounded up in midnight raids by the police and arrested.
It is also reported that they were severely assaulted, tortured, brutalised and denied access to medical treatment. The state sponsored public media houses and their masters in ZANU PF are making noise about it, broadcasting and spreading falsehoods that MDC-T members connived to kill the notorious Mutedza.
However, as we debate and analyze this unfortunate incident, it is very imperative to draw it closer by making a retrospective look into almost all or similar incidences that took place in Zimbabwe before. The million dollar question that lingers in the hearts of many, as the selective investigation process is currently underway is who might probably have killed Inspector Mutedza.
The absurdity of the foregoing is expressed by a common false and rushed conclusion by both the police commissioner Chihuri and ZANU PF that MDC-T members murdered Mutedza, way before investigations started. There are a number of issues to be scrutinized if we are to get to the bottom of this matter.
It is a well known fact that ZANU PF has a penchant of sacrificing its children on its political altar to cleanse its bruised and battered image. When it does such, it rushes to point its bloody hands towards unsuspecting opponents. In-house assassinations are not a new phenomenon in ZANU PF; to them it is a culture that was inculcated even way before independence.
However before independence the assassinations were mostly driven and inspired by power struggles within a struggle. We all know the controversies surrounding the assassination of Hebert Chitepo in Zambia and Josiah Magama Tongogara in Mozambique on the eve of Independence Day. Like has always been the case, the revolutionary party was quick to point at opponents yet the enemy was within its ranks. It was a case of a hen feasting on its eggs.
We all know about the Matabeleland disturbances of 1982-87. How thousands of people were massacred and displaced in genocide by the 5th Brigade, a North Korean trained army regiment. How Lookout Masuku and Dumiso Dabengwa were made to rot in narrow cells on trumped up treason charges and that they sponsored the dissidents, a terrorist group that was operating in Matabeleland.
How father Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo was made to flee to exile because the CIO wanted his head. However it was later discovered that the accelerated rate of murders of farmers and that of some tourists as well as nefarious operations of the dissidents in Matabeleland was due to an underhand operation of the secret agents who were hiding under the veils of obscurity of these banditry activities.
They exaggerated incidents to make it easy for ZANU PF to declare a state of emergence decree and unleash reign of terror in Matabeleland and some parts of Midlands, areas perceived to be predominantly controlled by ZAPU. This was all meant to tarnish and blackmail ZAPU and its leadership as a terrorist group which deserved punishment but of course at the expense of people’s life including those of farmers, tourists and the general populace of Matabeleland.
Resultantly ZANU PF succeeded by forcing ZAPU into a unity government in 1987 and the latter was successfully silenced. This is exactly what ZANU PF is trying to do to the MDC-T, to generate anarchy, mayhem and chaos so that it justifies the harassment, persecution, incarceration and displacement of the latter’s leadership and members ahead of elections due to take place probably in 2012 or 2013.
The story of Cain Nkala, the late war veteran and ZANU PF activist who was abducted on 5 November 2001 at his home in Magwegwe, Bulawayo is one other glaring example of ZANU PF dirty politics. His decomposing body was later found in a shallow grave at Norwood farm near Solusi University, 40 km South West of Bulawayo on November 13 2001.
Instead of doing justice by making non partisan and professional investigation into this gruesome murder, the ZANU PF police rushed to arrest, harass and torture MDC members including the then MP for Lobengula-Magwegwe constituency, Fletcher Dulini Ncube and Director for Security Sonny Masera as well as party activists Army Zulu, Kethani Sibanda, Sazini Mpofu and the late Remember Moyo ( may his soul rest in peace).
We all know the accused MDC members were never behind this as the court went on to acquit them. Of course the acquittal indeed exposed the then government of ZANU PF’s growing penchant of relying on evidence extracted under duress. State security agents used torture to coerce MDC members to admit that they killed Nkala. What is so astounding is that ZANU PF the main culprits behind this gruesome murder shed crocodile tears by pretending to mourn yet they knew it was an in-house assassination.
On the graveside Mugabe repeated the accusations, calling the killing “a terrorist provocation by MDC”. Up to this day the culprits in ZANU PF are roaming the streets scot-free. The arrests were definitely a smear campaign against the MDC ahead of the 2002 Presidential elections. Yes we all know ZANU PF is capable of this, they did it before especially when election time draws close and when there is a regional or continental meeting with Zimbabwean crisis on the agenda.
Lest we forget that in 2007, a year prior to the 2008 election a number of MDC-T leaders and supporters were arrested, persecuted and tortured on trumped up charges that they took part in terror campaigns and banditry in Harare including the bombing of ZUPCO buses, trains and police stations. We know it was the art of the state security agents to create anarchy so that they fabricate cases against MDC-T members.
Look here, there were harmonised elections due to take place in 2008 and again there was an AU summit in Dar Salam, Tanzania. It was again at this meeting in Tanzania where the idea and role of South Africa mediation in Zimbabwean crisis was strengthened, with the continental block calling for a reinvigoration of negotiations between MDC factions and the then ruling party ZANU PF.
The skirmishes orchestrated by ZANU PF and the CIO prior to this meeting were meant to serve three purposes. Firstly, they wanted to render the state ungovernable so that they would descend on MDC members and justify it. We all know how on 11 March 2007 armed riot police with canisters and teargases descended and brutalized people including MDC-T President Tsvangirai who had gathered for a SAVE ZIMBABWE prayer meeting.
One MDC activist Gift Tandare was shot dead by overzealous, partisan and unprofessional police. Secondly ZANU PF wanted to use it against MDC at the AU meeting to vindicate their false claim that the latter is a group of violent terrorists who didn’t deserve any recognition by the continental block. Thirdly, it was a strategy to displace and scatter the MDC leadership and demoralize its supporters by instilling fear in the masses ahead of the harmonised elections that were coming in March 2008.
Having been smartly outwitted by MDC at the SADC Organ for Politics Defence and Security Cooperation meeting held on 31 March in Livingstone the resort town of Zambia, ZANU PF was left shocked. They were shaken to the core by the riot act read to its leader by SADC. The rebuke by the regional block sent some frightening shock waves across the former ruling party. What troubles them most is the sudden shift by SADC and its new perspective towards Zimbabwean politics in general, ZANU PF and MDC in particular.
SADC now knows and indeed it acknowledged that the retrogressive element in Zimbabwe is ZANU PF. Of late the regional block has realised who the perpetrator and sponsor of violence in Zimbabwe is. Of cause reality has dawned upon SADC leaders that MDC is the most popular home grown political organization with its roots deeply sunk in the masses contrary to ZANU PF’S position of portraying it as a western sponsored puppet party.
This glittering state attained and scored by MDC in Zambia did not impress ZANU PF. Now the latter as has always been the case has embarked on the old chorus of smear campaign to soil, tarnish and blackmail the newly attained status of the MDC ahead of the SADC extra ordinary Summit to be held on June 11 in Johannesburg including portraying the people’s project as a violent political entity.
ZANU PF’s woes were also exacerbated by its failure to dent the image of its fearsome opponents in the so called anti-sanction petition expedition where they desperately sort to get two million signatures.
Limping from Zambia, ZANU PF did not rest in their quest to damage the name of MDC and divert the attention of SADC from concentrating on pertinent issues of election roadmap. The regional block is calling for major reforms in the media, electoral as well in the security sector among others, for a free and fair election in Zimbabwe, a position proposed and concurred by MDC.
In its restlessness to injure MDC what did ZANU PF do? It started by infiltrating MDC structures causing well planned but unnecessary violent clashes at a number of the party’s provincial congress meetings. We witnessed it at several of such meetings including in Chitungwiza, Harare, Masvingo, Mashonaland West, Midlands and it reached a fever pitch and crescendo at the host Province of the MDC’s 3rd National People Congress Bulawayo.
As if that was not enough, prior to the SADC, Windhoek Extra Ordinary Summit the former ruling party sent emissaries all over the region with flyers showing pictures of MDC intra-party violent clashes. The same documents were taken to the extra ordinary summit held in Windhoek, Namibia on the 20th of May. President Jacob Zuma the mediator did not attend the Windhoek meeting because the date clashed with Municipal elections in South Africa.
However ZANU PF’s desperation reached dizzy heights when they tried in vain to unashamedly smuggle the Zimbabwean issue into the agenda of the meeting in the absence of both the mediator and MDC. They went on to launch a book titled “MDC and the Culture of Violence” and this is a ZANU PF arsenal to be used against MDC at the proposed SADC Johannesburg meeting due to take place on 11 June 2011.
The current smear campaign including the killing of Inspector Mutedza is a shameless strategy by ZANU PF to rebrand and repackage the unmarketable stinky product of “elections 2011”. The new brand and package launched ahead of the Johannesburg meeting is called ‘MDC and the Culture of Violence’. The soporific yodelling about ’elections 2011’ is another joke from the ZANU PF bag of dirty tricks.
They dismally failed to breathe life into their proposal of having elections in 2011. The most celebrated veteran harlot who made it in big brothels of politics, self proclaimed ZANU PF gatekeeper, de facto speaker of the Mnangagwa faction and vendor of the’ elections 2011’ product, Jonathan Moyo tried in vain to sell the idea. To ZANU PF reform is a scary midnight ghost which gives them nightmares and sleepless nights hence the frivolous call for ‘elections 2011’ with or without reforms.
So the grand plan is to cause anarchy, render the state ungovernable, put the blame on MDC, solicit support from SADC and call for elections before even the new constitution is written. The murder of Inspector Mutedza raises eyebrows, more questions than answers and there is a vertical suspicion that this could be one of the dirty tricks of the CIO to hoodwink and try desperately to arm twist SADC and the Zambia resolution about Zimbabwe and the holding of a free and fair election.
We know what the partisan police and CIO are capable of doing including harassing victims and protecting culprits. They don’t respect even God the creator himself and as I am scribing this, they are busy smuggling ZANU PF doctrine into the house of Christ, the Anglican Church through one Nolbert Kunonga, a devil masquerading as a man of God. Surely we cannot stand aside and watch as ZANU PF run riot, we should expose them for the charlatans they are.
The blood mongers, sycophants and hypocrites want to cling to power through nefarious means including gobbling their own children and blaming it on others. It is well known and yes it’s true that MDC-T is a unit of peace loving and law abiding citizens who like the biblical Shadreck, Misheck and Abednico are being harassed and persecuted for their belief, a belief that Zimbabwe needs a government which guarantees, good governance, human security and social justice not totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
This death also comes at a time when a series of interesting political events are unfolding in Zimbabwe including the recent call by MDC-T President, the Rt. Hon Prime Minister Dr. Morgan Tsvangirai that Mugabe should come out clean on political violence. On the other end there is beleaguered ZANU PF busy recruiting youths to boost their militia bases ahead of the elections due to take place in 2012 or 2013.
It is reported that the troubled party has recruited about 70 000 youths who are being kept and trained at army Barracks. It also comes at a time when some overzealous Harare Council mortuary-boy one Chirwa in conjunction with Chipangano, a certified ZANU PF militia group are terrorizing MDC supporters in Mbare and declared Harare’s oldest township a no go area for MDC.
Elsewhere, the former prodigal son Jabulani Sibanda, Chairman of War Veterans Association is wrecking havoc in Masvingo, hurling threats and frog marching people to ZANU PF meetings and rallies. Given the background and dark history of ZANU PF as well as facts currently on ground one is forced to suspect that the late Inspector Mutedza was murdered by some of his own from the troubled party. We should not plunder justice and truth to populate impunity and lies.
The police should not harass victims and protect culprits and we call upon these law enforcement agents to be professional and non-partisan in their execution of duties. We also forward our demand that the police should exhibit the same urgency when MDC-T members are killed.
We demand that the murderers of Tonderai Ndira, Better Chokururama, Cain Nyeve, Godfrey Kauzani, Partrick Nebanyama, Trynos Midzi, Chrispen Mandizvidza, Gertrude Mtombeni and many MDC members killed since 2000 should be arrested as a matter of urgency including the notorious member of the CIO, one Mwale.
We condemn the selective application of justice.
Tallent Chingovo is a member of MDC-T Youth Assembly, currently doing his Masters Degree in International Relations.
