Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday issued a chilling threat to the opposition, labelling them hostile forces bent on undermining the country and its institutions.
Addressing the nation on Heroes’ Day — a public holiday set aside to commemorate those who fought in the country’s war of liberation, Mnangagwa said his government was not going to be cowed into surrendering to those forces.
“Today, we are holding our commemorations against the background of renewed glaring and unjustified attacks by our perennial detractors both inside and outside our borders,” Mnangagwa said in a speech broadcast live on television.
The Zimbabwean government has grown increasingly hostile to its own people, brutally pinning down dissent and arresting those it perceives to be political threats. In the past few months, it has embarked on a crusade to kidnap, arrest and harass human rights activists and members of the opposition parties, the most notable being journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, opposition politician Jacob Ngarivhume and renowned author Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Others such as MDC senior official Job Sikhala are in hiding for fear of being imprisoned and tortured by the infamous Central Intelligence Organisation — used by the government to instil fear in the citizenry.
Mnangagwa described demands for him to uphold human, civil and political rights as “divisive falsehoods and concoctions by renegades and supremacists who want to pounce on our natural resources”.
He said contrary to those claims of brutality and ruthlessness to its people, his government had “since its inception three years ago accelerated the entrenchment and consolidation of constitutional democracy and the rule of law”.
After increasing pressure for him to intervene, President Cyril Ramaphosa recently appointed former Speaker of parliament Baleka Mbete and former cabinet minister Sydney Mufamadi as special envoys to Zimbabwe and tasked them with “understanding the difficulties that the country is facing”.
Ramaphosa is the current AU chair and his intervention could help cool down the political tensions.
Zimbabweans based in SA and some South Africans on Saturday teamed to picket at the Zimbabwean embassy in Pretoria where they clashed with police.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), which has over the years provided legal teams for victims of government’s human rights abuses, and are representing Ngarivhume and Chin’ono, on Sunday expressed concern about the pair’s treatment after they were transferred to a maximum-security prison in the city where the country’s most notorious prisoners are kept.
The lawyers said in a press statement that the transfer was done behind their backs and that the two had been “strip-searched, shackled in leg irons and moved to Chikurubi Maximum Prison at night.”
As the government continued to put more resources into crushing dissent, very little has been availed to fight the Covid-19 pandemic that is threatening to run out of control. Its reaction to the pandemic is in a shambles.
At the height of the recent surge in infections, Zimbabwe had no substantive health minister. The funds set aside to purchase protective equipment were embezzled by corrupt officials, leading to the dismissal and arrest of the health minister Obadiah Moyo, a close Mnangagwa ally.
Last week Mnangagwa appointed his ailing deputy, retired General Constantino Chiwenga to head the government’s fight against the virus.
A few weeks ago, the country lost its Agriculture minister, retired air marshal Perrance Shiri to the virus and since then cabinet meetings are now being held virtually as the bulk of his colleagues had been in contact with him.
Doctors and nurses are on strike over poor salaries and lack of protective equipment. The number of infections and deaths are not well monitored and in most cases under-reported.
With the bulk of its basic food supplies, foreign currency requirements and medicines coming from its citizens abroad, the country has also been harshly affected by the closure of regional borders.
With inflation at more than 753%, the bulk of its citizens are suffering from the triple evils of political intolerance, a surging coronavirus and an almost non-existent economy.
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