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Pardons and forgiveness only come after apologies
Although their intelligence agencies had told them that Robert Mugabe would lose the 2008 plebiscite, the ensuing election results caught Zimbabwe’s Service Chiefs by surprise.
They suddenly realised that Mugabe was their security buffer; if he vacated the presidency, he would have his hands too full trying to save himself from the gallows to worry about the demise of his Security Chiefs.
Without Mugabe, the Service Chiefs and many cabinet ministers are sitting ducks who would almost certainly be arrested for allegedly looting the DR Congo and for the roles they allegedly played in the Matabeleland and Midlands massacres of the early 80s.
They started intimidation talk before the 2008 elections, saying that Tsvangirai would never rule Zimbabwe even if he won the election.
For almost a month after the elections, the Service Chiefs delayed the announcement of the results, keeping Mugabe in isolation as they concocted a way out.
They cooked up the results and announced that although the then leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, had won the elections, he had not garnered enough votes to avoid a run-off election against Mugabe.
This gave them enough time to cheat history and the Zimbabwean people.
The run-off election was then slated for June and the Service Chiefs put their men to work.
Intimidation graduated into beatings and assaults. People disappeared. Violence turned into murder.
These are the same people accused of crimes against humanity in the murderous rampage in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces!
I have noticed that there is something about the abuse of people that stimulates and gratifies Mugabe.
Slowly, as the haunting of the nation picked up momentum, Mugabe emerged, suddenly showing up in public and on television.
He started emitting his familiar verbal diarrhoea, insulting and threatening people and saying anything to incite his followers into a frenzy and orgy of violence.
With 200 Zimbabweans dead in less than two months and the violence increasing by the hour, Tsvangirai pulled out of the presidential race, saying that he wanted to save people’s lives.
Mugabe continued with the election campaign, molesting and arresting hundreds as he ran against himself then declared himself the winner.
Since that time and throughout the life of the so-called unity government they formed as a compromise over incomplete elections, violence against the people never really stopped.
Now there is talk of elections next year and the violence and incendiary speeches have picked up again!
With Tsvangirai in France early this week, to pick up another award for fighting for democratic ideals, which have never materialised in Zimbabwe, Mugabe deployed the army in both rural and urban areas.
In Masvingo, about 500 armed soldiers in full military gear marched and toi-toied in the streets of the provincial capital on Sunday.
The morons sang and shouted slogans in praise of Mugabe.
They stupidly demanded that Mugabe be declared life president.
Then on Wednesday, heavily-armed soldiers deployed in the area three months ago, wearing military fatigues and brandishing AK47 rifles, stormed Green Valley farm in Chipinge East and took away MDC officials.
The MDC MP for the constituency, Mathias Mlambo, said the raid by the soldiers on the farm was so sudden and brutal it left villagers severely traumatised.
In a chilling statement, Mlambo said that the soldiers “went to the farm looking for MDC supporters and officials”.
Is this not the signal that the world, especially SADC and the African Union, needed as evidence that there is need to intervene now so as to have free and fair elections?
In a shabby and sloppy operation after the 2008 elections, the Service Chiefs managed to kill 200 of our citizens.
But their abuse of the people then is going to pale in comparison because this time they started early and are very well prepared.
On Tuesday, seven school teachers in Muzarabani abandoned their schools and went into hiding, fleeing marauding ZANU PF youths, who want to punish them “for contributing to the constitutional outreach exercise which ended in October”.
Teachers have always been targeted by ZANU-PF because, by the nature of their essential services in the remotest of places, they cover every part of the country and are in touch with the grassroots.
ZANU PF does not trust teachers because they suspect that teachers influence students, who in turn influence their parents to go against party directives.
It is not difficult to see the Government and party’s involvement in this because the local MP, one Lazarus Dokora, happens to be the Deputy Minister of Education in the coalition government.
Villagers said that the youths visited each school in the area, fingering teachers who contributed during the outreach meetings but, instead of the Deputy Education Minister taking an interest in the welfare of the teachers, he allowed 7 schools in his constituency to close indefinitely because the teachers had fled.
The situation is not helped by outbursts from Defence Minister Emerson Mnangagwa, the perennial president-in-waiting, who this week was quoted as saying that ZANU-PF would again not concede power even if it were to lose in the next round of national elections.
This is exactly what they said and did before and after the 2008 elections.
Meanwhile, a US-based radio station quotes the IMF as saying that Zimbabwe’s economic recovery is now at risk from rising political tension in the government of national unity, amid increasingly strident calls for elections next year.
It said that political uncertainty could endanger projections of 7 to 7.5% growth next year.
But the IMF report cautioned that “risks are slanted to the downside” with the political situation doubtful, the country's external position precarious and the financial sector vulnerable.
But amidst all this honest effort by some who care for Zimbabwe’s revival, ZANU-PF sets out on a path of human and national destruction in a country whose people have been subjected to the worst the world cannot even imagine.
What do these heartless ZANU-PF people want?
Meanwhile, the world waits in anticipation for the next elections, expecting Zimbabwe to come out brand new out of its tainted self.
The international community sees the electoral oddities but is neither complaining nor doing anything to ensure a good, democratic outcome.
Today, the world watches as Zimbabwe digs itself into another hole and tomorrow the world will help us bury those killed by elections.
Today they give Tsvangirai awards for fighting for democracy; tomorrow, they will fly in and out of Zimbabwe, prescribing bitter and unworkable solutions for the nation because of failed elections.
I thought prevention is better than cure.
Last week, about 50 Zimbabwean non-governmental organizations urged the three political parties that make up the country's national unity government “to jointly engage senior military and other security service commanders to reassure them of their future in return for guarantees they will not interfere in the transitional democratic process”.
They urged the three leaders in the unity government “to engage the commanders to discuss the interests and fears of the security chiefs with respect to future prosecution for past actions”.
The heart of the matter is that pardons and forgiveness are only available to those who seek them; to those who confess, show remorse and ask for forgiveness; no matter how horrid the crime committed.
You cannot pardon people who have been reminded time and time again to stop killing innocent people.
You cannot pardon people who explore chances of being forgiven while they continue killing.
You cannot forgive anyone who has not admitted committing an offense.
Since the Matabeleland and Midlands massacres, these murderers should have shown some remorse and apologised to the nation.
But, instead, they continue with the murder of our citizens whose survivors are now being blackmailed into “pardoning and forgiving them” as a means to stop further killings.
Like hell we will!
Unless these people own up, admit what they did and genuinely ask for forgiveness, they will not be forgiven.
They are having their way with us anyway, so we do not have to guarantee them anything.
Enough people have died at their hands and they are not going to get any comfort from the survivors.
What do you say?
Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com
The Service Chiefs are members of the notorious Joint Operations Command, which unleashed violence on the people during the 2008 elections and who “forced” Mugabe not to accept the results of the elections.
They are back again for an encore of killing our people and to abuse the nation. They are back again refusing to accept the will of the people.
So, if they are stupid enough to believe they can really negotiate a pardon while they continue committing the same crimes for which they need to be pardoned, they are more stupid than I thought.
They will wake up in a towering inferno, surrounded by violent flames and the pungent smell of burning human flesh.
We never said they are our emissaries yet these are the same people who lie about us before the international community.
These are the same monsters who are wasting lives and money organising fatal elections while SADC is busy serving tea to its employees and pretending Zimbabwe is not there.
This time around, SADC must be made to supply the body bags during the Zimbabwean elections.
At least they can then justifiably claim they assisted Zimbabweans.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is sadly the way it is today, Thursday, November 11th, 2010.
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