The MDC notes the release into the public domain the report
of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the Violence of 1 August 2018, which
report has confirmed what we all knew that the military shot innocent
Zimbabweans on that fateful day.
With respect it was just a public relations show for Zanu
PF, we reject the report in its entirety but sadly for Zimbabwe we are back to
square zero.
The MDC is a peaceful organisation which must be applauded
for resisting unconstitutional means of redress despite years of suffering. Any
attempt to blame the victims in the report is a clear ploy of equalization.
As we have always predicted, the outcomes of the commission
are clearly bound on whitewashing the killing of unarmed innocent civilians by
soldiers and create a climate of impunity for such killings while equating the
victim with the perpetrator.
The Commission was compromised so it could not therefore
finger those whole stole power .Justice has not been done, victims are turning
in their graves, families have been insulted and millions of tax payers’ money
have been wasted.
It was a waste of time, resources and a lost opportunity to
move the country forward. A lost opportunity to save Zimbabweans from the above
situation.
In the preamble of the report, the Commission recognizes
that what was at stake was the direction that Zimbabwe is supposed to take. It
was therefore incumbent upon the commission to outline a pathway that would
take Zimbabwe out of a culture of violence which clearly dominates the national
political space.
The commission also had an opportunity to contribute to
Nation Building, laying a foundation for transitional justice and setting the
tone for National Healing.
More importantly the commission had an opportunity to deal
with the issue of militarization of the Zimbabwean State as well as setting a
foundation for electoral sustainability as a pathway to constitutional
democracy in Zimbabwe.
Sadly, the recommendations and the findings of the
commission fall short of addressing the above as a result blowing the
opportunity to answer the national question once and for all.
The unarmed civilians were killed to entrench ZANUPF in
power immediately after a disputed election which we all know was won by MDC
President Nelson Chamisa. We are therefore not deceived by the effort of
President Mnangagwa to create a sense of urgency in releasing the report.
While the commission correctly locates the soldiers as
responsible for the people’s deaths on the 1st of August, the report attempts
to put blame on the MDC for organizing a demonstration and planning violence
while also falsely claiming that the protestors were armed, something that
cannot be confirmed using any of the available video footage including
recordings of international media.
There is a shocking recommendation that the soldiers and
the police are supposed to investigate themselves despite the fact that the
military personnel who were interviewed by the Commission denied any wrong
doing.
Is it is ironic that the Commission expects the people who
have already exonerated themselves to lead their own investigation.
It is also ironic that when death occurs through the hand
of an individual it is murder which according to our laws must be dealt with
through the justice delivery system entailing a trial of the suspects at the
High Court yet the commission recommends an internal investigation by the
murderers.
The report shockingly claims that the law was followed in
the deployment of the army basing their arguments on POSA when the constitution
outlines how deployment must take place. Once the Commission found that the law
was followed it ought to have placed responsibility squarely on the deploying
authority in this case Mr. Dambudzo Mnangagwa.
We restate that the Terms of Reference were problematic in
that they were judgmental and couched as a witch hunt in a way that could
result in immunity for those who killed unarmed civilians in the full glare of
the public; international community and; those who commanded them to do so.
A number of the Commissioners appointed had issues of
potential bias and conflict of interest that our President Nelson Chamisa and
his team adequately explained before the COI. They were compromised in a way
that made these findings fairly predictable.
This is why the COI tries faint heartedly and suggests that
campaign speeches of the MDC heightened tensions and contributed to violence.
The MDC supporters have been recipients of gratuitous violence from both Zanu
PF and the state as these two institutions are unfortunately conflated.
The conflation of Zanu PF and the state in the history of
Zimbabwe has resulted in the unfortunate systemic and serial killing of
civilians seen as opposition from immediately after independence to now. The
Gukurahundi experiences in the 80s; the targeting of white farmers and hundreds
of thousands of farm workers in the early 2000s; Operation Murambatsvina (drive
away the filth) in 2005 that left more than 1.5 million people homeless;
post-election violence in 2008 with widespread and systematic extra-judicial
killings are some of the examples of the result of this conflation of party and
state.
This is why the Commission ends up finding that the
election was free and fair despite all evidence to the contrary that had been
presented to them specifically from credible election observer missions.
The deliberate failure or omission to implement the constitution
is part of a process that Zanu PF uses to reduce our electoral process into a
charade meant to use electoral democracy as an instrument to acquire state
power and place it at the hands of a small cabal that has conflated security,
executive and economic power to the detriment of Zimbabwe’s development.
In short the report has several contradictions, it waters
down its own findings for the purposes of exonerating the ruling elite from
doing.
And even worse the report was released by a subject of the
investigation thereby bringing doubts on whether it wasn’t doctored. The
accused in essence read his own judgement and expects the victims to be
satisfied.
Jacob Mafume
MDC National Spokesperson
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