Does Mugabe want to be dragged to ICC?

THERE is a growing trend where opposition activists are reportedly abducted, tortured and injected with a mysterious substance by alleged Zanu PF functionaries.

Source: Does Mugabe want to be dragged to ICC? – NewsDay Zimbabwe September 29, 2016

Comment: NewsDay Editor

The increasing incidents of such vile abuse of borrowed statecraft and torture are becoming worrisome. Regrettably, this points to how President Robert Mugabe’s regime has resorted to thuggery and banditry to muffle the voices of the oppressed majority.

One is tempted to believe that Zanu PF is now engineering these disturbances to justify entrenching its own increasingly unpopular rule through such machinations to justify the imposition of a state of emergency.

The sad thing about all this is that instead of focusing energy and resources in rebuilding the country, which is now just floating like a ship with no captain, they would rather expend their energies attacking and abusing people exercising their rights to freedoms of expression and assembly guaranteed by the Constitution. Mugabe has an obligation to uphold the supreme law and not instil fear in the people or create the notion that he is some demigod, who should not be criticised at all. No!

The fact that the church, which for long has watched political excesses and the abuse of power from the sidelines, is now speaking against such evils, should have sent signals to Mugabe that his party has gone rogue and, hence, should just stop it.

Clearly, Zimbabweans have a right to challenge how they are ruled. The events unfolding, where Zanu PF apparatchiks act as though they are above the law and inflict harm on the opposition with impunity, should stop forthwith.

Mugabe should be reminded that these are issues that have seen other leaders being dragged before the International Criminal Court. Citizens have rightly pointed out how disturbing it is that government only acts when opposition parties are involved.

The world has observed with horror the disturbing pictures of opposition political activists tortured by Zanu PF thugs and, sadly, the police have not been swift in dealing with perpetrators of violence, as they do when opposition activists are involved. What happened to the doctrine of equality before the law?

Against this backdrop, the church is appealing to the powers that be to uphold the Constitution and ensure constitutionalism prevails in the country.

We hope that Mugabe will heed the calls. If Zanu PF claims that the opposition is responsible for violence, then it has a duty to rein in its members when they resort to the same.

It is worrisome when a ruling party resorts to violence to justify its presence in government. That is how the vicious cycle of violence is perpetuated, strengthening it as a culture of our politics, when elsewhere, the progressive world is moving forward, while we remain stuck in primitivism.

Clearly, if such chaos is allowed to continue, the people’s security is not guaranteed and citizens will live in fear. At the end of the day, all these things are considered by the international community, into which Zimbabwe is asking to be re-accepted after having been labelled a pariah State for many years.

We believe, for Mugabe, it is not power that corrupts, but fear, the fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it.

We believe Mugabe must be stopped before he creates genocide on peace-loving Zimbabweans.