By Patriot Sunungura
ZANU PF leader, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, might be a black Zimbabwean who participated in the war of independence, but he is proving to be a polished version of Ian Douglas Smith, the late leader of the repressive colonial regime.
In fact, Cde Ruka Chivende is outperforming Ian Smith when it comes to the closure of democratic space and violation of citizens’ rights.
The newly passed Private and Voluntary Organizations (PVO) Act is one of many repressive pieces of legislation President Mnangagwa has passed in his short 8-year reign.
Not to mention the Statutory Instruments (SIs) Trabablas is issuing like confetti. It seems that when President Mnangagwa has nothing to do, he passes time by issuing a Statutory Instrument.
Where Smith had the Unlawful Organizations Act as a tool to ban civil society and political organizations, Mnangagwa now has his own weapon in the form of the PVO Act.
Civil society organizations must toe ZANU PF’s line and dare not speak about accountability lest they be banned.
Just as the Rhodesian Front government had LOMA to target nationalists in the 1970s, the Second Republic has its own tool in the form of MOPA. In its less than 5 years of existence, MOPA has claimed scalps of opposition members like Amos Chibaya and Budiriro 4, Jameson Timba and Avondale 78, and ARTUZ leaders Robson Chere and Obert Masaraure.
Then Smith had the Preventive Detention Act to detain individuals without trial, but Mnangagwa polished the Act and repackaged it as the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act.
Pre-trial detention is the new normal when it comes to the Second Republic’s justice system.
The likes of Blessed Mhlanga, Job Sikhala, and a host of civil society leaders and political activists have all tasted this version of Mnangagwa’s “Shamhu Inemunyu.”
