There is a people’s movement on social media — #ZanuPFMustGo, that has been calling for an uprising to remove Zanu-PF from power for state capture and state failure. Zanu-PF has succeeded in capturing all institutions that are meant to uphold democracy.
Not only has Zanu-PF captured the state, it is incapable of running it. It has no capacity, no desire and no agenda to deliver that which governments are mandated to deliver. It has failed to effectively and efficiently allocate resources. Ours is a very small (population) resource-rich country that would be thriving were it better managed. Zanu-PF has failed to provide public goods and to facilitate the provision of merit goods. Under its watch, the economy has collapsed, the state has collapsed.
Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) patrolling the streets during proposed anti-government protests in Harare, Zimbabwe, 31 July 2020. (Photo: Stringer)
It is one thing to capture a state and run it efficiently, and another to capture the state only to run it to the ground, and then unleash armed forces on anyone who complains.
On Thursday last week, Zimbabwe Republic Police abducted a 22-year-old journalism student called Tawanda Muchehiwa. He was arrested with two of his cousins, Advent and Amandlenkosi Mathuthu, but bundled away into a separate car.
Later that same day, police raided the home of Tawanda’s uncle Mduduzi Mathuthu, a journalist and Editor of ZimLive newspaper, which has been exposing corruption-linked scandal after scandal by the Zimbabwean government. They claimed to be searching for “subversive materials”. They abducted Mduduzi’s sister Nomagugu Mathuthu and vowed to hold her illegally until her brother gave himself up.
After reports of the raid and abductions, the family’s lawyer Nqobani Sithole went to Bulawayo central police station to look for them. The police denied arresting them. Sithole persisted and asked the police to explain why the young men’s cars were parked at the police station, but the police continued to profess ignorance. Hours later, when police realised Sithole was unrelenting, they produced Advent and Amandlenkosi Mathuthu, but not Tawanda Muchehiwa.
They claimed Tawanda had escaped. The two cousins refuted that story and explained that Tawanda had been arrested with them, but they had no idea where he had been taken.
The next morning Sithole filed a habeas corpus, an urgent application asking the judge to order the police to produce Tawanda. The application was granted the next day, this past Saturday — and police were ordered to produce Tawanda within 72 hours.
Zimbabweans were outraged. Why would the judge give his abductors three more days with him? Later that night, Tawanda’s abductors dumped him 3km from his home, severely tortured. He was taken to the hospital where he suffered renal failure, indicative of more harm having been done to him internally, possibly through poisoning.
A few months ago, Zimbabwe’s government abducted three women from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and tortured them for days before dumping them. In 2019, they abducted Peter Magombeyi, a doctors’ union leader, for leading a doctors’ strike for better salaries and hospital equipment. They kept him for days and dumped him after torturing him.
These are just a few of the Zimbabwean government’s victims of enforced disappearance and torture, both crimes against humanity. The Zimbabwean government has been committing heinous crimes with impunity against anyone who speaks out against them.
Over the weekend they arrested hundreds of unarmed civilians for peacefully protesting against them in the 31 July protests. These arrestees included MDC spokesperson Fadzai Mahere and one of this year’s.
Thandekile Moyo is a writer and human rights defender from Zimbabwe. For the past four years, she has been using print, digital and social media (Twitter: @mamoxn) to expose human rights abuses, bad governance and corruption. Moyo holds an Honours degree in Geography and Environmental Studies from the Midlands State University in Zimbabwe.