Counter-revolution
Last week SW Radio Africa published the first in a six-part list of alleged CIO operatives. The original list contained names and addresses, while an amended list, published over the weekend only has names.
Responding to the public reaction to the list, SW Radio Africa Station Manager, Gerry Jackson wrote a statement saying: Experts say the CIO is the most powerful arm of ZANU PF’s security apparatus, the ‘brains behind the regime.’
According to the Council on Foreign Relations: ‘There is no public record of the CIO’s size, but it is thought to have thousands of operatives. Many Zimbabweans think the organization has a network of informers that extends into the Zimbabwean diaspora.
Jackson omits the part of the 2008 report, which states: Some analysts think the CIO’s ability to generate fear among Zimbabweans might exceed its true power.
Assuming the list is authentic, then what? How is releasing classified government information going to benefit the people of Zimbabwe?
In the article, SW Radio Africa discusses several people on the list and uses circumstantial and inconclusive evidence to link them to acts of violence and torture. Commenting on the article in NewZimbabwe Professor Tendi points out that the journalist concerned is hardly reliable: [he] once made an outlandish claim that UK-based public intellectual George Shire is Air Marshal Perrance Shiri’s brother. George suffered serious consequences, one of which was the desecration of his father’s grave, because of [his] fable.
I have several problems with SW Radio Africa publishing this list. First, it takes the CIO out of context. Gerry Jackson is right to assert that there is no legislative framework for the organization, but going by her statement one would be forgiven for thinking that the CIO was formed during the last decade to maintain ZANU PFs grip on power, but this is an institution that was inherited from the colonial government, and in fact Ian Smiths Chief of Intelligence, Ken Flower was retained by Our Dear Leader after Independence. The CIOs lack of accountability, methodology and terror-tactics are characteristics of the Rhodesian era. In doing research for this blog I came across this quotation about the operations of the CIO:
“In the mid 1970′s, in the most closely guarded secret operation of the entire Rhodesian war, the CIO embarked on a programme of chemical and biological warfare. Doctors and chemists from the University of Rhodesia were recruited by the CIO and asked to identify and test a range of chemical and biological agents, which could be used in the war against the nationalist guerrillas. By 1975 clinical trials were performed on human guinea pigs at a remote Selous Scout camp at Mount Darwin in northeastern Rhodesia. The CIO provided victims from their detention centres, choosing little-known detainees who had been arrested on various security charges. In the secrecy of the camp, the doctors administered various chemical and biological agents to the prisoners, experimenting with delivery systems and dose levels. The local CIO Special Branch disposed of the bodies in local mine shafts.”
The bodies discovered earlier this year might very well be some of the victims of this brutal and inhumane programme.
My second problem is that publishing a questionable list of CIO operatives does nothing to address the deficiencies of the institution, and may contribute in exacerbating the situation for Zimbabweans who are being terrorized by CIO operatives. The fact of where the list is placed, online and outside Zimbabwe does nothing to help those people.
Finally, the list was published as a reactionary measure, rather than as a revolutionary one. It is conceivable that anyone in possession of that list in Zimbabwe, having taken the trouble to download and print it for local distribution, would be charged with treason. If Munyaradzi Gwisai and the 45 can be beaten, tortured and held for weeks without trial based on conjecture and rumour, then surely there are worse evils in store for anyone who actually has State Secrets on their person. It was done without thought as to objectives and consequences, as though placing information in the public domain is the end, rather than the means to it.
Tuesday, July 12th 2011 at 1:40 pm
I am curious to know why you consider the exposure of Mugabe’s thugs to be “counter-revolutionary”? In light of the Wikileaks phenomenon and the rise of people power in North Africa and elsewhere, real transparency and accountability is finally a possibility. These foundations for a free society will never come through the largesse of dictators and anti-democrats but through the struggles of ordinary people who wrest power away from autocrats and their thugs.
Exposing the machinery of oppression is in itself a noble pursuit irrespective of any other considerations.
You accuse SW Radio Africa of using “circumstantial and inconclusive evidence” and then, in the same paragraph, leap into a completely different topic accusing a journalist who made a mistake of being forever unbelievable as a result. This sleight of hand undermines your argument (whatever that might be because it escapes me). The “circumstantial and inconclusive evidence” is pretty conclusive but more importantly, given the information clampdown by the thuggish regime and the subversion of the legal system in Zimbabwe, what do you expect? Signed Affidavits?
CIO taken out of context
How does tracing the roots of the CIO back to Rhodesian days assist your case except to show the continuities between the racist regime and Mugabe’s reign? Exposing the names of a few hundred operatives is ‘unpacking’ the institution and raising the possibility of accountability for those who actually carry out the evil deeds of the Mugabe regime. If even only one of those thugs wakes up and decides to quit or plead for forgiveness, then the publication will have done some good
The Deficiencies of the institution
Why should SW radio Africa be obliged to cover what you determine? If you want a structural analysis of the Office of the President, try do it and see how far you get.
A reactionary measure
A rather infantile analysis! Do you really think Zimbabwe has any “revolutionary” potential? When 70% of its adult population has fled? When it is the second poorest country in the world? You seek to support your argument through implicit rather than explicit arguments, through assertion rather than logic and end up having no argument at all.
You assert without any evidence to know what the motives of SW Radio Africa were – “it was done without thought as to objectives and consequences, as though placing information in the public domain is the end, rather than the means to it.”
You end without conclusion to sum up your case, no doubt rushing off to post some pro-Mugabe drivel elsewhere on the internet which seems to be a primary function of CIO operatives these days, although the similarities of language and the fact that you only quote him, leads me to believe that you and Miles-Tendi are one and the same.
Kudos to SW Radio Africa and more power to them! Let more government employees come forward with information to expose those who betrayed the trust of the people and turned our government into a brutal cabal of thieves and killers whose only concern is self-enrichment at any price. I feel shame for those who parrot the deluded propaganda of a doomed dictatorship – no doubt, after Mugabe’s downfall, they will say we never really supported him and then go on to sing the praises of the next bastard in power.
Tuesday, July 12th 2011 at 2:58 pm
I seriously agree with Upenyu here, publishing this list wont do anything to change the situation on the ground. Will anyone on the list be tried for anything outside of Zimbabwe, in case they are found guilty of what they are accused of? Does this happen in the UK and if it does, whats the degree of contempt associated with it? No I dont agree with the publishing of this list because after all has been ssid and done and the “democratic process” finished, we still need these institutions and exposing them like this isnt being transparent at all.