Thoughts On State-sponsored Police Brutality after Save Zimbabwe March 11 Campaign

So once again The ZRP has gone on a State sanctioned rampage of attacking
citizens practicing their basic human rights, the rights to free association
and to free expression. It is no secret that for a dictatorship to blossom,
the first right to be squelched is the freedom of expression. The Save
Zimbabwe Campaign, whether under the auspice of a civic grouping, or a
spiritual gathering, had that sincere right to express itself, and expose
the crisis Zimbabwe is in as a nation.

As though the obscene poverty in Zimbabwean homes (and homeless families) is
not enough of a burden upon the masses, the Police took it into their hands
to go ahead and crush on what was surely intended as a peaceful
march/protest. With hundreds arrested, and one murdered by a bullet (we
wonder how many more will die from sustained wounds from 'minimum force' in
Police cells and at Goromonzi torture Camp -and yes, there is a torture camp
in Goromonzi; we wonder also how many have died due to malnutrition, or
hunger, and due to poor health delivery) the current condition is
unsustainable on all fronts. With our economic wheels well rusted, and the
political foray frayed, it is predictable that sporadic social upheaval is
increasingly becoming a feasible alternative, thus the recent waves of riots
and protests on the streets -Harare, Bulawayo, Gweru what have you.

What is embarassing in all this, as an African, or better still, as an
African in the 20th Century, is that it has taken Ban Ki Moon, the United
States White House (yes, even those guys funneling bombs by the dozen to
Iraq are unsettled) and Australia to condemn the attacks on Mr Tsvangirayi,
the MDC leadership and the Zimbabwean general citizenry, yet our own good
neighbors such as South Africa stand by and choose to hear no evil, see no
evil and speak no evil.

It is insufferable a condition to die screaming while your neighbor idly
hangs about their laundry, working hard not to hear your slow death in the
torture chamber. I wonder if Thabo Mbeki considers this deafening silence on
these attrocities part of his vision of a modern Africa, remember, that
whole African Renaissance idea.

And Nigeria, the African Union, SADC, ECOWAS and other continental players
have also joined Thabo in his season of silence over Zimbabwe. How pitiful.

And yet they are singing and dancing -our Heads of State- in Accra,
celebrating Ghana's 50th independence anniversary, extoling Nkrumah and his
visionary leadership and philosophies, and how, "the independence of Ghana
is meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of Africa.” And I
wonder to myself whether Africa also needs independence from its failed
leaders such as Robert Mugabe, Lansana Conte, and Omar Al-Bashir. Because
sitting here at my desk, typing away and thinking of those activists
languishing in those lice fields we have for prison cells, I wonder about
their liberties, freedoms of expression, freedoms of speech and freedoms of
association, and they have been clearly violated.