Luke-ing the Beast in the Eye: Spooky people, spooky missions and a spooky purpose

It was a hectic week of several developments most of which no longer surprise us. This was the week in which the CCC’s inaugural rally shook the regime to the core and in which the ZEC shenanigans around the voters roll continued to be exposed. This was the week in which the State broadcaster sunk to plumbing depths in its biased electoral coverage, a development that was worsened by the unashamed foisting of words into the mouth of popular CCC leader Advocate Nelson Chamisa. It was simply embarrassing for the sole State broadcaster to sink to such depths.

It was the week in which the rites of the political funeral of Mr Douglas Mwonzora kicked off in earnest after a gargantuan crowd overcame the sinister ploy by State and Zanu-PF agents to sabotage the inaugural rally of the new political kid on the block, a rally that silenced naysayers and conclusively settled the needless debate of who in the country enjoyed unrivalled traction in the hearts and minds of ordinary Zimbabweans.

Indeed, it was the week in which the citizens made a strong statement that the future is yellow when they gathered in their numbers in a massive show of force while bellowing out the popular chorus that has overnight become the national anthem # Ngaapinde Hake Mukomana ( Kangene Ujaha ).

But my focus this week is about members of the country’s spy agency popularly known as the CIO (hereinafter called the spooks) that the regime has jointly and severally deployed to strategic departments and institutions.

The dictionary meaning of the word spook is something that causes people or animals to be suddenly afraid and to run away. The word spook also refers to a spirit or a ghost.

In Zimbabwe, members of the country’s spy agency, the CIO, are colloquially referred to as spooks, probably because they similarly cause panic and fear as well as their penchant to move incognito, which probably gives them ghost-like traits. I use the word spook in this piece to generally refer to this spooky outfit and its equally spooky enterprise!

Let it be said that we have always known that this is a securocratic regime that invests and relies heavily upon the country’s security services for its survival. But this week I focus only on two spooks who in recent days and weeks have been working flat out to serve the interests of the regime that deployed them.

Once a spook always a spook. It was always deliberate that former CIO directors Aaron Tonderai Nhepera and Gift Kalisto Machengete were deployed to very senior positions in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage and to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) respectively.

Dear reader, this week I reveal to you the utility and the dividend that these spooky deployments have yielded for the regime especially in recent days and weeks.

I shall briefly walk you through what the institutions to which the two chief spies were deployed have been doing in the past weeks to curtail and suppress the basic interests of the ordinary citizens.

Every spooky deployment always has a spooky mission and a spooky purpose. And sometimes the citizens fail to connect the spooky deployments with the resultant spooky activities and the spooky outcomes.

Machengete , POTRAZ and the deliberate Internet slowdown during the massive CCC rally

Gift Kalisto Machengete is a former top spy in the dreaded CIO where he was in charge of administration. He has in recent years been strategically deployed to POTRAZ, obviously to stem the free flow of information particularly in the wake of the growing utility of the Internet and the digital technologies that have been spawned by the Fourth Industrial revolution.

POTRAZ is the regulatory authority responsible for regulating the country’s telecommunications industry and can slow down or shut down the country’s Internet services, which it has purposely done in the past few years.

This has caused massive inconvenience to citizens most of whom now use the Internet for banking and other online services, including a host of other economic activities that now depend on the Internet.

On Sunday, in the wake of Advocate Nelson Chamisa’s highly popular CCC rally in which hundreds of thousands of citizens turned up in spite of the massive obstacles thrown against them, there was a reported slowdown in the country’s Internet service. The reason for that is simple.

In contravention of the country’s Constitution, the sole public broadcaster did not grant Chamisa’s campaign launch the same live coverage they had granted Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF the previous week.

This meant many Zimbabweans could only follow the proceedings online. Therefore the Internet slowdown was not coincidental but a spooky intervention to try and control the flow of information on that fateful day.

Thank God the spooky enterprise failed dismally. Even in the context of the slowdown, the truth on the day was too big to be hidden and millions still watched the proceedings at Zimbabwe Grounds online.

The spook, Gift Machengete, was justifying his deployment by the country’s spy agency to the country’s regulatory authority. In a securocracy such as ours, the purpose and reason for these deployments have nothing to do with the interests of the citizens but with safeguarding the interests of the regime.

Strangely, our so-called government spends its time devising means of how to close out information instead of planning how to have it disseminated.

As we trudge towards the watershed 2023 plebiscite, we are likely to experience more of the same. At a time when real time announcement of poll results is a key electoral demand, especially the Presidential poll tally, it must come as no surprise in 2023 when the country’s Internet service crashes down as eager Zimbabweans await to hear the country’s political fate.

Don’t say you were not warned. Gift is just but a securocratic gift to the system’s power retention agenda and on Sunday he gave a glimpse of what he can do!

Nhepera , the Home Affairs Ministry and the no-show by the RG’s office during the voter registration blitz

The Home Affairs Ministry is a key security ministry under which the country’s police service falls. It is the same Ministry that is also responsible for issuing out birth certificates, IDs and passports, among other responsibilities.

The permanent secretary in what is now called the Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage is none other than Aaron Tonderai Nhepera, a former deputy director-General of the CIO. In short, the former deputy chief spook is now the technical head of this crucial ministry.

Stakeholders had initially agreed with ZEC to include the Registrar General’s Office in their current voter registration blitz so that new voters would procure IDs first then register to vote at the same venue.

This would have enabled the huge numbers of school leavers, most of whom would be virgin voters in 2023, to acquire their IDs and register in the same blitz and at little or no transport cost since the registration blitz would be taking place in their respective localities.

But Hell No. The ZEC came alone during the current blitz and the RG’s office was in a no show. Readers need not be reminded that the RG’s Office falls under the same Home Affairs Ministry in which Nhepera, the former top spook, is the principal accounting officer and permanent secretary.

Dear reader, it does not need a rocket scientist to see that Nhepera’s deployment to that Ministry was a well-calculated move. While everyone expects the youths to acquire IDs so that they can register to vote in their huge numbers in the next election, which is their democratic right, Nhepera’s mandate appears to be that of ensuring that it doesn’t happen.

The Zambia elections shook the system to the core. No wonder the current registration blitz has not had the requisite uptake as most of the youths have failed to register as they do not have IDs. Obviously thanks to a spooky deployment in the Ministry.

Dear reader, I hope you now understand why the Ministry of Home Affairs is coming up with all sorts of excuses such as the lack of ink and other consumables as the reason why they are having challenges in their Constitutional mandate to issue out IDs. They have given all sorts of excuses as to why they could not be part of the ZEC blitz. But we all know the spooky agenda.

Hundreds of thousands of youths want to acquire IDs so that they can register to vote in the next poll. But dear reader, maybe you now understand why the former deputy chief spy is now the principal accounting officer in this crucial ministry.

Zambia shook them and there is a spooky reason why Zimbabwe’s youths must be denied IDs. In case they “finish the sports” in 2023 as Zambia’s youths did last year.

Indeed, there is every reason to believe Nhepera’s responsibility is to impede and not to facilitate the issuance of IDs. There is every reason to believe the spooky mission and purpose of the Ministry’s principal accounting officer is to deliberately frustrate the momentum of the voter registration blitz.

“Here a spook, there a spook, everywhere a spook” in strategic State institutions is always a ploy to further the regime’s agenda of power retention at all cost. And this week I have given just two examples of the spooky deployments of this regime especially in the imminence of a crucu election.

Conclusion

Emmerson Mnangagwa, a long-time Minister of State Security in the 1980s, is a typical securocrat. He is one man who has no idea whatsoever on what modern statecraft entails. He is one man who assumes his sole remit is to repress and spookify all arms of the State in the furtherance of his single agenda of power retention, even amid his epic incompetence that is no longer a subject for debate.

“A spook here, a spook there, everywhere a spook” has always been the modus operandi of securocrats, of which Mnangagwa is one. He might not be knowledgeable on modern statecraft but he is a killer and is adept at frustrating rather than facilitating the dignity, rights and collective happiness of the citizens.

There are several serving and former spooks jointly and variously deployed across the country’s body politic, not to serve citizens but to serve ED’s personal and Zanu-PF’s institutional interests.

This week, I only sought to give two examples so that readers would contextualise two current events viz Sunday’s Internet slowdown during Chamisa’s mammoth rally and the failure by the State to provide IDs, especially to the young people during the current voter registration blitz.

The two are just but an example of how these spooks that are strategically deployed to strategic State institutions invariably connive with the system to frustrate citizens and to further a subjective, nefarious political agenda.

Spooks are not just deployed. In our case, they are deployed to serve a partisan and subjective purpose that serves the interests of Zanu-PF. Some of these spooky missions have resulted in the spilling blood of innocent Zimbabweans.

Some spooky enterprises have maimed people while other spooky missions have been to infiltrate the democratic movement in order to castrate the democratic agenda.

Against this background, it is no wonder the citizens are worried stiff about the contentious issue of the ZEC secretariat where the Commission itself has publicly acknowledged that over 15 percent of its secretariat are spooks.

We all know that these spooky people always have a spooky mission that serves the purpose of derailing the people’s sovereign will.

Indeed, and as said last Sunday by the citizens’ Champion-in-chief Advocate Nelson Chamisa, we must collectively as citizens not allow ZEC to frustrate and impede yet again the sovereign will and expression of the country’s citizens in the forthcoming watershed polls.

We must and we will stand our ground!

Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen and a deputy Presidential Affairs champion in the Citizens Coalition for Change led by the citizens ‘ Champion-in-Chief , Advocate Nelson Chamisa. You can interact with Tamborinyoka on his Facebook page or via his twitter handle @ luke_tambo.