This Bad Santa has stolen our Christmas
I like to call them “uninformed uniformed forces.” Some are so incorrigibly daft you wonder whether that is how they are vetted for recruitment. Yes, those cops who will fleece and extort your measly dollars, and have become so brazen about demanding bribes they even do it when literally the whole world is watching.
You see them at roadblocks where they stop commuter omnibuses and never bat an eyelid as they accept bribes right under the gaze of passengers. Some think they know the finer details of the law, and I heard the other day one rookie cop with cheeks that clearly have never known a shaving machine or razor blade actually citing sections of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act to a bewildered young man. The cop was going on about the police have the right under Zimbabwean law to stop and search him or anyone for whatever reason the cops deem fit. But the cop knew and the man knew and I also knew that what the cop wanted was a bribe for him to stop wasting that man’s time.
But then some Zimbabweans being Zimbabweans will pee in their pants once these once revered keepers of the peace start speaking that gibberish. And though you know damn well you did not commit any offence, they will still drag you to the holding cells hoping that along the way before you get to the filthy cells you would have made them an offer they cannot refuse. And these days it is strictly forex so woe betide him who walks around with empty pockets. And it’s so true.
I watched appalled the other day as a baton stick-wielding cop threatened bank clients with a good clubbing. “Hofisi yedu ihombe,” the cop said, apparently bragging about being above the law. This was after someone had grumbled that the cop’s behaviour was uncalled for. And guess what, these threats were being done right inside the bank. It was obvious the cops were itching to crash some skulls and break some bones. Imagine a gun in the hands of such people. They would fit those types who live by the dictum: “I only carry a gun when I intend to shoot something (or someone).” And the crime the cash-strapped people had committed: they wanted to know if the bank had any cash. But the irascible cops – apparently on high alert (or simply high on something else) as this was the day the ZCTU had called on the people to bum-rush the banks and demand their hard earned cash – would have none of it as if they themselves had loaded pockets.
But then they are now in the habit of taking out their frustrations on law abiding citizens. I always laugh surreptitiously when I see them in their civilians loitering outside pubs expecting largess from anybody who can buy them beer. “It’s a thankless and dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it,” I have heard that line a hundred times, but when we reach a point where virtually everyone no longer holds these uniformed chaps in awe like during the country’s nascent years, then you know the country is off the rails.
I heard a commuter omnibus tout demanding that a uniformed cop pay his fare like everyone else as these folks are for some reason always in the habit of expecting – and getting – free rides. I wondered what it is that that has changed for a policeman to be dressed down and humiliated like that in front of amused members of the public. “No fare, no ride,” the tout said. Boy was the cop stunned! And pay he did. I could sense that the mortified chap was silently vowing that he would have his day when he is assigned as a traffic cop and then he would demand more than a pound of the tout’s flesh. I thought I saw steam hissing through cop’s ears. But what could he do, threaten the tout with arrest? In any case, it wasn’t the cop’s car so he had to pay like everyone else, I heard an emboldened passenger say.
That is the society we have been forced to live in as young men and women living or working outside the country vow they won’t make the annual Christmas holiday trip because of all this crap they hear about what is happening to their mothers and fathers as scripted by other mothers and fathers (of the Revolution?). For some of us, well, we are right in the thick of things and this Bad Santa has once again stolen our Christmas.
After all, we are living in the age where cops refuse to respond to distress calls and instead expect you to bribe them to arrest a known housebreaker! And many thought it was the burglar who bribes cops to escape arrest, but now these amoral roles have been reversed: now it is the victim who bribes cops so that the bad guy is arrested.
Crap, I say.