ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
A Predictable Tragedy. Daniel Compagnon
Читать онлайн.Название A Predictable Tragedy
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780812200041
Автор произведения Daniel Compagnon
Издательство Ingram
The executive branch of the state fully supported the violence against the opposition, and the CIO was behind several cases of abduction and torture. The murder of Martin Olds in April 2000, with its bizarre modus operandi, was the work of either the CIO or the military intelligence. A paramilitary unit came from outside the Nyamandlovu area—perhaps from Harare—and its obvious purpose was to kill the farmer (they started to shoot shortly after arrival). The uniformed police stopped neighboring farmers who responded to Olds’s urgent call on the road to his farm and intervened only after the death squad had left the scene. The operation was staged on Independence Day, when Mugabe was delivering his speech on television, and was meant to terrorize the white farmers.
According to Amnesty International, “impunity has become the central problem in Zimbabwe, where state security forces—police officers, army officers or agents of the CIO—commit widespread human right violations without being brought to justice.”37 Although statements from victims gathered by the Human Rights NGO Forum and witnesses who testified in the election challenges at the High Court named some perpetrators of violence, very few were subsequently prosecuted. The General Amnesty for Politically Motivated Crimes, which was enacted on 6 October 2000, absolved most of them. As a matter of fact, violence with impunity is part of ZANU-PF’s political culture: a general amnesty was granted after both the liberation war38 and the Matabeleland massacres,39 allegedly in both cases in a spirit of reconciliation but effectively preventing any accountability on the part of combatants and officials involved. In any case, the Emergency Powers (Security Forces Indemnity) Regulations, enacted in July 1982, which were similar to the indemnity law passed by the Smith government in 1975, had in advance indemnified subsequent unlawful acts perpetuated by government officials and security forces. The report of the commission of inquiry set up in November 1983 to investigate human rights abuses by the Fifth Brigade during the Gukurahundi—the Chihambakwe Commission—was never released by Mugabe, and when human rights groups went to court in 1999 to compel the government to publish it, minister of justice Emmerson Mnangagwa—one of the officials implicated in the killings and abuses—claimed the document was missing and could not be located. The “dissidents” who surrendered to the police benefited from the amnesty, but civilian victims and their families received no apologies, and the issue of appropriate compensation is still pending as of this writing.
Another sign of this culture of impunity entrenched in the ruling party is the extensive use of presidential pardon;40 as earlier stated, the two who made an attempt on Kombayi’s life in 1990 were pardoned. Edgar Tekere, ZANU-PF secretary general and a Cabinet minister, who took part in the murder of a white farmer in 1980, benefited from an indemnity law passed by the Rhodesian regime to protect its soldiers who had committed atrocities from prosecution. Similar methods were used to protect some of Mugabe’s henchmen in the last two years.
Although murder, robbery, rape, indecent assault, and possession of arms were formally excluded from the October 2000 amnesty, very few ZANU-PF criminals have been prosecuted and none convicted. Mberengwa War Vet leader Wilson “Biggie” Chitoro, who coordinated the terror campaign against the opposition in the district,41 was arrested after the parliamentary elections and remained in prison for more than a year, charged with torturing to death an MDC activist at Texas Ranch Farm militia camp. However, he was released on bail in November 2001 and has not yet stood trial. He allegedly resumed his activities in December the same year and set up another militia base at Chingoma Secondary School in preparation for the presidential election.42 When the Buhera North election challenge was heard in the High Court, judge James Devittie requested that attorney general Andrew Chigovera arrest and prosecute the known suspects (one a local War Vet and the other a senior CIO operative in Chimanimani) for the murder of two MDC officials campaigning for Tsvangirai who were burned alive in their car on 15 April 2000. The police were tasked in July 2001 to investigate the case but to this date the docket is blocked by the police chiefs in Harare, and the killers remain at large, perpetrating violence (one of them was briefly detained by the police and then released). The impunity granted by the police to criminals from ZANU-PF militias extends to uniformed police officers who committed human rights violations voluntarily. Indeed, impunity creates a sense of solidarity and common belonging between the two, in the process further damaging the police as an institution of the state.
Moreover, the presidential amnesty covered only the period between 1 January and 31 July 2000. However, political violence, including murders, committed since then was not attended to by the authorities either. In instances when perpetrators of violence were arrested and stood trial, they happened to be MDC members. This was a deliberate attempt to portray the opposition as violent—a recurrent claim of the government press—while ZANU-PF militias, responsible for close to 90 percent of the incidents, and all of the most serious, enjoyed impunity. The latter were clearly encouraged by party leaders to terrorize again in preparation for the 2002 presidential poll. In addition, victims seeking redress or witnesses giving evidence in the High Court when MDC’s electoral petitions were heard were assaulted again and some had to go into hiding.43 Those arrested who had benefited from the amnesty then took their revenge against the people who reported them to the police.
From the 2000 to the 2005 Elections and Beyond
Violence abated for a couple of weeks before the 24–25 June 2000 elections, and the months of July and August were relatively calm. However, retribution violence against farmworkers never stopped completely. In Harare high-density suburbs that had returned MDC members of Parliament with huge majorities (80 percent or more), riot police and army units were deployed in early October 2000 to quell some public unrest over the rising food prices and started a door-to-door campaign that lasted until the end of November to beat people at random. Perpetrators did not hide the political motives of this retributive violence. In February 2001, an MDC MP in Chitungwiza and the party security chief, Job Sikhala, and his pregnant wife were assaulted in their house at night by soldiers. Another MDC MP Willias Madzimure was attacked by ZANU-PF militias twice (in May and July) and his house was ransacked while he was sitting in Parliament.44 Once again between late February and 20 March 2001, army units were deployed in several townships and raided beer halls, streets, and private properties to beat people and force them to chant slogans in support of Mugabe and ZANU-PF.45 The same scenario repeated itself in July, in response to a two-day general strike organized by the ZCTU.46
Throughout 2001, random beatings, abduction, and torture of MDC supporters went on sporadically. Gokwe saw some of the worst violence between the parliamentary elections and the presidential ballot, with a record number of schools closed as War Vets attacked scores of teachers and forced them to flee to Harare.47 The latter were told that as civil servants they should not hold political views different from those of the government. The minister of Foreign Affairs warned: “You are going to loose your jobs if you support opposition political parties in the presidential election…. You can even be killed for supporting the opposition and no one would guarantee your safety.”48 This was a constant view shared by ZANU-PF leaders, as illustrated by the public controversy over civil servants’ political neutrality in 1995.49 Back in 1990–91, Cabinet ministers declared that civil servants should be card-carrying members of the ruling party.50 In all instances of violence (including rape) inflicted on teachers since February 2000, often in front of their pupils, the regional and national authorities of the Ministry of Education failed to stand up for the rights of the victims and provide them security. Not only were the teachers perceived as a natural ally of MDC since their union leaders had taken an active part in ZCTU and the foundation of the party, but they were seen by ZANU-PF as spreading wrong ideas contradicting the ruling party’s propaganda—thus explaining MDC’s growing success among the rural youth.
The June 2000 parliamentary elections established a pattern of extremely violent behavior that was to be repeated in by-elections thereafter, all of them “won” by ZANU-PF, including