REPORTS that hordes of Zanu PF youths besieged Mbare Magistrates Court environs on Monday threatening to burn vehicles belonging to lawyers representing opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) supporters accused of threatening to kill a Zanu PF activist if the accused were granted bail, is more than disconcerting.
The youths’ behaviour raises many questions, chief among them being: What kind of a nation are we turning into?
Honestly, a country that believes in the rule of law and sanctity of our judiciary and its processes cannot allow anyone to appear to be above the law. The obviously unnecessary and unwarranted demonstration of hooliganism at its worst by the Zanu PF youths comes as a major concern, especially given that there are many documented cases of ruling party activists who have publicly threatened to literally murder all those who want to challenge its rule.
For example, in July this year one supposedly church leader and self-confessed staunch ruling party activist Abton Mashayanyika said CCC leader Nelson Chamisa and his family should be killed. He was never arrested and he actually boasted about being untouchable.
Others have also publicly incited hate and violence against those opposed to the ruling party, and nothing has happened to them.
Last week, Zanu PF information director Tafadzwa Mugwadi told us that the ruling party was a peace-loving organisation and it was actually the opposition political parties that were the instigators of violence, while some individuals and organisations were being paid to tarnish the country and the party’s good name.
What makes some of us double curious is the fact that despite these repeated worrying incidents of people purporting to be acting with the blessing of the ruling party to incite hate and violence, the party has hardly lifted a finger to have them arrested for tarnishing its very good and unblemished image.
If truth be told, it is really disturbing some of us that at this rate the party is actually increasingly becoming a serious danger to itself because there is no way it can hope to spruce up its image by supporting violence and hate against those opposed to it.
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That it is unconstitutional for anyone or any party to take the law into their own hands as well as spread hate speech and incite violence seems lost to many in the ruling party.
All we are saying is, if all those violence-inclined people are purporting to belong to the ruling party why is the party not pressing charges against them for ruining its good reputation? By hardly raising a whimper over the very damaging utterances and behaviour of these zealots, it leaves some of us with no doubt that the party is complicit.
At Mbare Magistrates Court, the riot police merely came to maintain peace and order and we feel this was an opportune time for the ruling party to order the arrest of all those misguided youths for bringing the party’s good name into disrepute.
The party should have also ordered the immediate arrest of people like Mashayanyika for spreading alarm and despondency. Mashayanyika and all those with the same murderous mentality should be in jail as we speak for his genocidal attitude that has the potential to destroy the peace in our country.
But no, he and his ilk currently haughtily walk our land and Zanu PF is unfazed. Unfortunately, this is suicidal for the ruling party. We are just saying, lest we are accused of not having warned them.
In fact, Zanu PF and its government should be ashamed that they are supporting the incarceration of opposition legislators Job Sikhala, Godfrey Sithole and the 14 Nyatsime CCC activists for allegedly inciting violence when the ruling party supporters are openly and daily committing the very same crime.
