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HOW does Zanu PF reconcile its commitment to the National Healing process against threats by its youths during last Wednesday’s demonstration in Harare to “go back to June 2008”?
Not one of the leaders at the Zanu PF headquarters or those who marshalled the “anti-sanctions” march to the US Embassy remonstrated against the youths’ recourse to inflammatory language.
It is deplorable that such grandstanding against a party that is in government could be tolerated. The violence of June 2008 is nothing to gloat over. It remains a crime that should see the perpetrators being brought before the International Criminal Court for gross human rights violations.
The June 2008 violence perpetrators must have their day in court because it is only by punishing the culprits that we will bring some comfort to the surviving victims and to the communities that were traumatized.
More significantly, action against the perpetrators will deter future criminals and bring nearer the day when no leader, political party or organisation anywhere can continue to abuse the rights of others with impunity.
But it is a measure of the calibre of Zanu PF’s leadership that they could stand by while their youths fanned violence. Such leaders are committed to an order that only promotes their interests, no matter the cost.
It is important to record the role and exhortations of these leaders because one day they will have to account for these crimes. The geriatrics that fuel these virulent outpourings will not be around much longer to protect their pawns. And the ghosts of their victims will return to haunt them.
Zanu PF allowed its youths to threaten the Government of National Unity. What is tragic is that the law-enforcement agents appear impotent in the face of this threat to the fragile national stability.
It should not be difficult to identify the merchants of violence as they were captured on state-controlled media.
If law-enforcement agencies respect the Global Political Agreement and the Government of National Unity, let them demonstrate zero tolerance to inflammatory statements that threaten and seek to undermine the gains Zimbabwe has made during the past 12 months.
The threats last Wednesday came in the wake of inter-party violence in Epworth. While the parties are engaged in blaming each other, surely the three principals can ill-afford their loud silence? They must come out against elements in their midst sowing seeds of division.
Zanu PF has profited from violence. It can sugar-coat itself when the occasion commands but violence and Zanu PF are two sides of the same coin. It is not just the violence of June 2008 that claimed the lives of more than 200 people while several thousand others were maimed. There are also scores of lives lost in the wake of the MDC-T’s shock electoral victory during the 2000 elections.
The government abandoned the Leadership Code, because there was no political will. Right now there is ambivalence towards investigating allegations of corruption of the Chiadzwa diamonds and there might never be a proper land audit because of the rapacious nature of Zimbabwe’s political elite.
The Parliamentary Committee on Mines and Energy should be allowed to carry on with its work. Anyone who is found to have looted the diamonds should face the music. The land audit must go ahead.
If there are multiple farm owners, they must know their time is up. Zimbabwe cannot afford to continue to condone corruption while a handful of acquisitive people benefit.
It is time the three principals to the GNU reined in their followers and senior officials.
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