By John Chimunhu|
Now Daily News Analysis|
The brazen abduction and suspected murder of firebrand pro-democracy activist Itai Dzamara is a stark reminder that Zimbabwe is not a normal society. Despite all the propaganda peddled by some Western diplomats desperate to do business with dictator Robe Mugabe that the situation in the country has ‘normalised’, the opposite is true. Certainly, suffering Zimbabweans do not need some overfed Western diplomats and business opportunists telling them that Mugabe and his coterie have ‘reformed’ and deserve a seat at the table with normal human beings.
Despite the flashy limos they ride, expensive labels they wear and the trendy restaurants in which they dine, Zanu PF officials remain a band of unreconstructed killers who came to power through violence and will maintain it through murder and mayhem.
SHOCK
The abduction of Dzamara was done in broad daylight, in a public place close to his home. The shock effect of this is inescapable. It was meant to send a chilling warning to others of similar mind that, ‘if you go against the regime and its elements, you can just be captured and disappear like Dzamara’. If you turn up dead, nothing will happen to the perpetrators even if they are known. No token investigation by the police, no statement denouncing the killers, not even a word of sympathy.
POLITICIZED
An atrocity like this should not be politicized. Whatever Dzamara’s views and no matter how unpalatable they were to those in power, he deserved the protection of the Constitution. The state agents empowered by that Constitution and paid by our taxes to provide that protection failed in their duty on Monday. All citizens are equal before the law. We are taxed at the same rate, so why are some made to feel vulnerable while others enjoy maximum protection? Why are we paying so many soldiers, police and secret service agents if a man can not be safe enough to go to the local barber and get a haircut?
As citizens, the time to protest Mugabe’s brutal misrule is now. A collective display of revulsion through public protests will make the regime know that people are truly disgruntled and even spark the collapse of the dictatorship.
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