Guilty before proven innocent
Zimbabwean activist Grace Kwinjeh recently shared the following article with us.
And … as a matter of interest – you might well have missed it – in a recent Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) statement published in The Sunday Mail the ZRP has already concluded that “MDC hooligans” murdered Inspector Mutedza in Glenview. Proclaimed guilty even before trial.
Cry Woman cry, cry beloved Zimbabwe!
By Grace Kwinjeh“Another weekend in for my child, is that it??? Cynthia was picked up from her town residence, not in Glen View, and she was never in Glen View, why, why is this happening to my child and why to her little boy?? How do I tell a little boy that he can’t see his mother because she was arrested for no crime at all??” Anna Manjoro.
The above are the cries posted on the social networking site, Facebook, by Mrs Anna Manjoro, Cynthia’s mother. Cynthia is one of the 24 Glenview residents accused of killing a police officer, Petros Mutedza . Above is the shrill cry of anguish coming from a mother and grandmother for her daughter, Cynthia, who has left behind a son to whom she has to explain the ‘criminal’ enormity of his mother’s arrest.
Problem is there is no criminal enormity here! Only, perhaps, a coldly calculated ‘political enormity’. An eerie cloud of premeditated spitefulness that hovers ominously over Cynthia and three other women who have been transferred from the female section to the male one at Chikurubi Maximum prison– a holding centre for the most vile and dangerous criminals.
The psychological impact is unimaginable!
Just to prove where the real deception behind the arrests of the 24 lies is the fact that Cynthia herself, even the police admit, has not committed any offense, but her arrest is meant to ‘lure’ her boyfriend who, as they allege, is also behind the killing of the police officer in Glenview.
Anna’s cries are deep from Zimbabwe’s own belly, mourning for her beloved children.
Arbitrary arrests, torture, hate speech – you name it – characterize a relentless campaign by President Robert Mugabe’s acolytes in the top echelons of the army, police and intelligence to intimidate and instill fear in an otherwise restive population. This unfortunate group, it should be noted, is not the first since Zimbabwe’s independence to endure the brutality of similarly seeming mindless incarceration as a result of trumped up charges.
When political temperatures rise, women and children are the most vulnerable. But who cares?
Scars are still fresh from the violence of the 2008 Presidential election run -off. A woman from Manicaland Province states in a December, 2010 study commissioned by the Research Advocacy Unit (RAU) : “No place to hide. Politically motivated rape of Zimbabwean women”, “When I woke up the following morning on the 26th of June 2008, they had put a skirt on me and a ZANU PF t-shirt, I had blood all over my skirt and my thighs were swollen. My vagina was full of semen; I had wounds and cracks from being raped continuously. I could not walk because my legs were swollen.” The grisly forms of violence, endured by hundreds of women, through out the country during this dark period are well documented.
It may seem as if this is no longer the time to dwell on what some might feel to be petty struggles fought in high density suburbs like Glenview. It may, however, certainly be claimed, in some quarters, that the focus is no longer on the ability of the working class (or struggling women, on a more specific note) to mobilize and liberate themselves, and that now the focus has shifted onto the regional and African elites’ political will to offer leadership that will liberate Zimbabweans from a long time ally and friend of theirs.