Why Minister Theresa Makone must resign

By Tino Chinyoka

The callous murder of a 12 year old child in Headlands as he slept peacefully at home is a tragedy to his family who, as stories report, have suffered more than their fair share of tragedies.

Poignantly, it also represents the opening salvo in the campaign for our country’s political future, one that will take us through a referendum and then to elections. Just as tragedy seems to visit this young child’s family every election cycle, so too does it visit our country.

Yet, if experience is a guide, no-one will pay for this crime. Not the perpetrators. Not the direct beneficiary, Didymus Mutasa. At the time of writing this piece, the police have not even interviewed the Zanu PF operatives that news reports mention as having threatened to ‘deal’ with the family.

That this is not an isolated incident is as tragic as it is obvious. This is what Zanu PF does. Across the country, marauding hoards of so called ‘youths’, some with grandchildren in tow, engage in indiscriminate acts of violence and intimidation against actual and perceived supporters of the opposition.

The police take no action, except for when they arrest those victims that have the temerity to go and report the crimes, and after the elections, there is some kind of amnesty to reward the perpetrators with ‘justice’ and a chance to do it again come next election.

The situation in Zimbabwe now is similar to what it has been in the run up to every election since 2000. It has become so commonplace that in this day and age of prophesy, one need not be a Makandiwa to predict that sadly, young Christpower will not be the only death.

Several people will die before and after the next elections. What is also equally predictable is that Zanu PF and those acting on behalf of Zanu PF have and will commit crimes against humanity this year.

Crimes against humanity entail the systematic or widespread attack against a civilian population, the ‘attacks’ need not include arms of war but can involve deliberate mistreatment of civilians.

There is no need for an armed conflict for there to be an incidence of crimes against humanity, which seems to be a common misconception and perhaps a reason why people in Zimbabwe do not routinely use the term to describe what is happening.

There is no requirement that those committing the crimes be activated by a discriminatory ground, or indeed that every participant should know that they are setting out to commit crimes against humanity.

Article 7 of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Statute provides:

“1.     For the purpose of this Statute “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread  systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(a)     Murder;

(b)     Extermination;

(c)      Enslavement;

(d)     Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

(e)      Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;

(f)      Torture;

(g)     Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;

(h)     Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, radical, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;

(i)      Enforced disappearance of persons;

(j)      The crime of apartheid;

(k)     Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

It is clear from the foregoing that Zanu PF commits most of what is described above. The manner in which the attacks are carried out by the Zanu PF youths brings out the fact that they are activated by some governmental, group or organisational ‘policy’ directed against the civilian population.

Their aim is clear: frighten people so much so that they either vote for Zanu PF or do not vote at all. A number of international jurisdictions, looking at the events in Zimbabwe, have found that crimes against humanity have been committed over the period since 1999.

The farm invasions, political violence, police inaction, impunity, the use of rape as a weapon, arson attacks, beatings and the intimidation of voters and members of the opposition before elections have all been held out as evidence of the commission of such crimes. To quote from one such decision:

“We are satisfied that these two [attacks] were part of widespread systematic attacks against the civilian population……., carried out not just with the full knowledge of the regime but as a deliberate act of policy by it, with the intention of advancing its grip on power, suppressing opposition, and helping its supporters.

We are satisfied that the intention behind these [attacks] was to cause great suffering or inflict serious physical or mental injury.  The aim was to drive people from their homes and their work, and to do so in such a way that they would be so cowed by their experience that they would neither return to their homes nor foment opposition outside.

It would also deter resistance …. in other potential areas of opposition.  The aim was achieved by the mob violence of beatings administered to men and women, burnings and lootings in a deliberately brutal and terrifying experience.

These acts were obviously inhumane, and were, in our judgment, of a similar character to those in sub-paragraph (h) of Article 7.  These acts were clearly persecutory acts against [civilians].  They were undertaken for political reasons, the suppression of perceived opposition …….

In fact, the question for Zimbabwe is not whether crimes against humanity have been committed, (because they obviously have) but rather why, in the face of all the evidence pointing to the fact, the Office of the ICC Prosecutor has not opened an investigation. But, that is another argument.

One must look at the death of Christpower Maisiri within the context of a politicised situation where one party enjoys the passive connivance of the police and their superiors in the furtherance of its political aims.

His mother was raped as part of this systematic campaign against those perceived to be supporters of the opposition. Only days before young Christpower was tragically murdered, his family reportedly received threats because of their support for the opposition.

Similar threats are doled out across the country to anyone not known to support Zanu PF. People have been displaced from their homes in an effort to affect the outcome of elections.

Christpower has been murdered as part of the same campaign, in a cyclical but widespread campaign that ebbs and rises with each election cycle. The perpetrators are the same. The police do not act.  And neither has the Co-Minister of Home Affairs, Theresa Makone. And, this is where the problem lies.

Because, one must consider that after the parasitic insidiousness of Zanu PF is finally defeated (for it must), there will need to be an accounting. Those that committed crimes against humanity will need to be brought to book.

This will include not just the actual perpetrators, but the politicians who through their actions and inaction encouraged and/or allowed the conditions under which these crimes were committed.

Many Zimbabweans will wonder how it is that a Minister in charge of the police could not order the police to investigate these crimes and arrest the perpetrators and why, as seems the case, the police routinely turn a blind eye to politically motivated crimes committed against actual and perceived members of the opposition.

There are those of us that thought that the noise made by the MDC to ensure that it had control of this ministry would translate into actual control over the police, albeit shared control.

No-one would want to believe that Theresa Makone condones the partisan policing that is happening in our country. Common sense suggests that it is very likely that the police do not listen to her anyway.

However, her continued presence as a Minister of Home Affairs complicates any attempts to hold the actual Minister of Home Affairs, the one that the police will actually listen to, responsible for the police inaction.

For if we must prosecute a Minister of Home Affairs for crimes against humanity, what justification would there be to pick one over the other? Common sense does not make for good legal justifications.

It will not be tenable to prosecute one Minister of Home Affairs for inaction and leave out his co-Minister.

For Theresa Makone, as we mourn Christpower Maisiri and prepare to mourn the tens (please let there not be hundreds!) more that Zanu PF will kill over the coming months, the choice is simple: does she accomplish anything beyond getting a ministerial salary by remaining in office?

Can she make the police act to prevent these tragedies from happening?

Can she, in fact, get the police to do their jobs for a change?

If the answer to all that is no, then she must resign. Pure and simple. Because in the difficult problematic situation that we are in, if she is not part of the solution, then she is part of the problem.

Tino Chinyoka is a former student leader and now lawyer based in the United States.