StandardComment: Police behaviour courting revolt

Corrections
It is now difficult to come across a group of three people and they are not talking about the behaviour of the police. Mostly it is about how the police treat the commuting public with disdain and wantonly demand bribes from omnibus drivers. 

Buses are stopped at unmarked roadblocks and held captive for long periods until the bribes are paid resulting in people missing their schedules. This has resulted in anger building up in the hearts of the people. The police may wrongly think that the people’s silence in the face of such scornful behaviour is a sign of their docility.

 

But it is important to realise that one day the bottled-up anger will boil over. Signs of this are already beginning to show. Recent incidents testify to this, not least the one last week when vendors fought back a police assault in the Harare city centre.

 

The anger is worsened by the torment citizens are subjected to by vigilante groups such as Chipangano in Mbare which have become a law unto themselves disrupting the lives of people going about their legitimate business.

 

It has become patently clear that the combined behaviour of the police and such paramilitary groups is sanctioned by the highest office in the land. Otherwise how can we explain the impunity accompanying such illegal behaviour?

 

The common man in the street has lost trust in the police and a tipping point surely must come. The powers that be must be reminded of what sparked the Arab Spring in Tunisia. A vendor, under the incessant assault of the police, decided he could stand it no longer and burnt himself to ashes. The people’s bottled-up anger exploded and the regime of President Ben Ali fell.

 

There is a mistaken belief that this can never happen in Zimbabwe, because, it is argued, Zimbabweans are generally a peace-loving compliant people. Many also say that Zimbabweans have already been battered into submission during 30 years of Zanu PF repression. But these are the same people who fought a vicious liberation war against the Rhodesian colonial regime.

 

They can do it again.

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