NEWS > 21 March 2007

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Financial Gazette - Harare,Zim
21 March 2007

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Zimbabwe police take their ‘ba

ZIMBABWE’S police chiefs never have never missed a chance to pat themselves on the back for the alleged professionalism of the country's law enforcers both at home and when they are invited to participate in international peacekeeping missions.

In recent months, Zimbabwean police contingents have participated in peacekeeping missions in East Timor, Liberia, Sudan and Kosovo. Upon departure for or arrival back from these assignments, the nation has been told of their dedication and ability to execute their duties professionally. When a squad of 20 police officers left to join a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Sudan last month, Acting Police Commissioner Godwin Matanga said, “Our officers have stood shoulder to shoulder with officers from other police organisations and have proved to be of high professional pedigree as they have managed to land leadership roles in various mission areas.”
He believed it was because of their efficient and effective contribution that Zimbabwean police had made a significant contribution in rebuilding police services in various parts of the world that had experienced protracted wars and civil unrest.
On another occasion when yet another team was leaving to join a UN peacekeeping mission, Matanga was more fulsome in his praise of the police force saying, “Without doubt, it is a clear indication that we are and have always discharged our duties professionally and in accordance with international police standards, for had it not been for that, the United Nations would not have invited us to provide personnel for peacekeeping duties." In November last year, when 31 officers left for a UN peacekeeping mission in East Timor, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri said the fact that the world body asked Zimbabwe to send contingents to such initiatives was "clear testimony" of the professionalism of the force. "Let me hasten to remind you that the organisation and the country is happy that our participation has never been through canvassing, but is through our dedicated professionalism that we have always exhibited locally and globally"
Following the events of the past week when the world has been confronted with gruelling images of brutalised leaders of the opposition and the National Constitutional Assembly, it is hard to believe that the organisation that provides police officers who are supposedly paragons of professional integrity and efficiency during international missions is the same one accused of perpetrating these horrors at home.
It is difficult to see how anyone can regard the local police force as being the “envy of many” as a state-controlled paper once declared in a headline, when they seem incapable of performing the most basic and routine of duties — effecting an arrest without resorting to force. The much touted and impeccable record Zimbabwean police are supposed to have established on the international scene presents a dichotomy that perhaps only the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, could explain.
As far the ordinary person can deduce, the police seem to be suffering from a complex of some sort that makes them believe that their own compatriots are less worthy of the professional and humane treatment they accord citizens of other countries during international assignments. Their double standards are, in the words of one psychologist akin to "the hired killer who, after dispassionately shooting someone in a dark parking lot, goes home, kisses his wife and children, telephones his mother to find out whether her arthritis is any better and then sits down with a beer to watch the late show."
This sort of hypocrisy is not different from that exhibited by some heads of state who pose on the international scene as champions of justice and fair play for the people of Africa while subjecting their own people to brutal and tyrannical governance. Charity should begin at home.
About six months ago when leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions were assaulted while they were in police custody, the explanation given by the law enforcers was that this had happened because the unionists had resisted arrest. Following the vicious beatings perpetrated against Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, National Constitutional Assembly chairman Lovemore Madhuku and scores of opposition activists, it is being claimed once again that this occurred because these people resisted arrest. But the police have never told the nation exactly what the victims of their brutality did to "resist arrest" considering that in both the instances cited above, they were battered when they were already in police custody. But even supposing, for argument's sake, that anyone would be foolhardy enough to try to take to his or her heels, are we being told that a single detainee could elude the armies of police details normally assigned to arrest opposition activists.
It does not make sense for the police to tell the nation that bashing people repeatedly with blunt objects until they are bloody and swollen is easier and more professional than simply placing handcuffs on their wrists as required by Zimbabwean and international law. Since this is preposterous, it is safe to conclude that “resisting arrest” is an encoded phrase for something the police are hiding from the nation although it is obvious to all and sundry. The police are not doing themselves any favours by portraying themselves to the world and the people of Zimbabwe who pay the taxes that finance their
operations and livelihoods as backward predators preying on the very people they are supposed to protect.
As American Supreme Court judge, Justice Felix Frankfurter once observed, “The history of liberty has largely been the history of observance of procedural safeguards" whose purpose is not to "convenience the guilty but to protect the innocent”.
The police in Zimbabwe have to consistently stick to professional ethics and procedures so that they can assure all Zimbabweans of their basic human rights — freedom of expression, association, assembly and freedom from arbitrary arrest.
In a chapter titled EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW the authors of a book on government have this to say: “Certain liberties are essential to the operation of democratic government. But these liberties are not merely means of attaining self-government, they are ends in themselves. They do not exist to protect the government, the government exists to protect them.”

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Financial Gazette - Harare,Zim21 March 2007

Zimbabwe police take their ‘ba

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Financial Gazette - Harare,Zim
21 March 2007