By Tanonoka Joseph Whande
In undemocratic countries, there are things we can never tell apart; situations we are expected to consider as one yet are vastly different.
For example, we are expected to accept and not question when a ruling party uses government property for its party functions.
We always see government vehicles at Zanu-Pf functions because the ruling party blurred the line between government and ruling party. We must just accept and understand that the ruling party not only runs the government but owns it.
And, yet, this is an area that must be dealt with conclusively because there exists is a big difference.
Another, but much more serious fuzzy line exists between the people on one hand and the police, army and ruling party on the other.
Like everywhere else in undemocratic countries, the people stand alone against the ruling party, the police and the army, which always seem to amalgamate into one entity with all three led and controlled by the president.
Even in the USA, where the military supposedly keeps a distance from politics, there was a reaction camouflaged as a restating the point that the US Army would not obey an illegal order (from their president) after one Donald Trump said some stupid things.
On assuming power in our part of the world, a president immediately takes a defensive position by concluding that the people hate him – a truth all presidents should live by.
Even in parliament, where we expect parliamentarians to know better, we are flabbergasted by ignorance heavily tinted with hero worshipping.
Most of our parliamentarians are so overawed by just having made it into parliament that they stand at attention when a cabinet minister passes by – utterly ignorant of the fact that a cabinet minister is answerable to a parliamentarian, not the other way round.
It is not their fault because they have no principles and are not civic minded. That is how they make their living.
A sitting president always craves for immortality and has the mistaken idea that if everything passes through him, if he makes all the decisions, controls everyone and elevates his praise-singers, people will remember him fondly after he drops dead.
Not a chance. This stupidity leads to untold suffering of the people and the nation for no reason at all.
We start making history the moment we are born and history cannot be re-written or polished and Mugabe is not aware of this.
But by far, Mugabe’s most devilish behavior is using donated food relief to bait starving people into support for himself.
So inconsiderate is this man that, for years, he has been denying donated food to families deep in rural areas on suspicion that one or more among them do not support his party.
I was once a Short Term Expert as Information Officer for the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in Gutu.
The agency had to take a solid stand to discourage Zanu-Pf sloganeering whenever it was distributing donated foods supplied by the German Government because wherever donations are handed out, Mugabe wants people to believe he is the one who is helping them. Can anyone ever sink lower than Mugabe?
Further, for one of Mugabe’s most unforgiveable transgressions, I want to apologise to ourselves as I see young school children pulled out of classrooms and bussed to line up along the airport road just to wave to Mugabe.
Every week, I watch news on television and see Zimbabwean men, women and children being chased by baton-wielding police.
I try to think if the police officers who are beating up our people ever stop to think that the people are fighting for economic and political freedom for everyone, including the very same police officers who are beating them up.
Do the police know who they are serving?
Does the army know who they are serving?
A person of principle is one who adopts fundamental, primary, or general laws or truths from which others are derived. That is why we call most of our politicians and parliamentarians political prostitutes because they don’t live by any principles.
After seeing the bloodshed and the violence meted out against the people by the police, how does a so-called lawmaker refuse to censure police behavior in parliament?
They, instead, opt to walk out of parliament for Mugabe’s sake.
Ordinarily, people join political parties that are closer to their way of thinking so that their principles are not violated or be in conflict with party doctrine.
Parliamentarians are representatives of their constituents first and are party functionaries second: they carry a message from the people they represent. Yet our parliamentarians are Mugabe’s representatives in their constituencies not the people’s representatives before Mugabe and in parliament.
The interests of parliamentarians, the police and the army should be with the people and the nation, not political parties.
Ours has been a broken society for too long and the healing process starts when we bite down on our raw wounds to heal ourselves just as doctors inject the eyeball to save our sight. Forget chimurenga, the fight has only just begun.
In 1997, late musician Andy Brown released an album called Tigere.
On that album is Mapurisa, a song about some young rascals who were taunting the police after being caught ready-handed smoking dagga (mbanje) and drinking moonshine (tototo/kachasu).
The youngsters had been severely punished with sjamboks and were now weary of police officers, singling out Augustine Chihuri, the Commissioner General of the Zimbabwe Republic Police.
Now fearful and a little more respectful, the young rogues were now keeping their distance, but warning that the police would arrest anyone without hesitation.
Lost in the beautiful song is mention of a process that was normal in our days of old; something that we have now lost as professionals, as a nation.
After the police officers caught these misfits indulging, they did something we hardly see today.
Corporal punishment was meted out on the youngsters but who made the ‘guilty’ decision and who walloped the misbehaving youngsters? Not the police!
‘Vakanomhangara kuna ma teacher edu…yowee…yowee…chamboko chatirwadza…’
Witnessing the law being violated, the police apprehended the people concerned and took them elsewhere for arbitration, punishment or release.
It was not the people who reported the crime to the police; it was the police who reported the crime but to school teachers!
Today, the police and the army are usurping roles not meant for them while parliamentarians dodge their responsibilities.
The army does not belong to a president; it protects the nation from external threats and plays a role in assisting the police to bring relief to the people during emergencies. The police, meanwhile, interact with civilians more as they exist to maintain law and order, not to mete out justice on the streets.
These police and army officers abuse our people to prop up an evil, selfish and cruel president.
The nation mourns every day from the abuse from our own people in police and army service.
The police are witnesses, others will prosecute; their role is to protect the civilians from each other and to ensure individuals enjoy their rights and citizenship without harassment from anyone, including from their own government.
Andy Brown, here is to you, kid!