Uprising in Zimbabwe

Sunday Times:

A Harare taxi driver, Tafadzwa Nyatsanga, was negotiating fares with passengers outside an agricultural show when a policeman arrived and demanded to be taken somewhere for a fare of just Z$50,000, about 10p.

When Nyatsanga refused, pointing out that other people had been queuing for hours, the officer, Michael Masamwi, began beating and punching him, whacking him round the head with his truncheon.

There was nothing unusual about this in the Zimbabwe of President Robert Mugabe. But then something strange happened. Someone from the crowd stepped forward and told the officer that what he was doing constituted “a human rights abuse” and he should stop.

Masamwi laughed and hit him too. The man again told him that what he was doing was wrong as there were hundreds of people waiting. This time the crowd joined in, turning on the policeman and beating him.

The officer called in riot police. They dispersed the crowd violently and arrested the taxi driver, who is still in jail two weeks later.

A few days after the incident, however, Masamwi received a legal summons. Then last week about 500 people gathered outside his police station to demonstrate. This protest was also broken up by riot police and 11 people were arrested, but the demonstrators returned the next day.

Such unprecedented public action is the result of a new movement that has been launched in Zimbabwe to try to end police brutality by naming and shaming the most violent officers and taking them to court.

...

“We’re saying enough is enough of police brutality,” said Shaw-Gray. “We felt you might not be able to get rid of Mugabe, but we could make people aware of their rights and how to act.

“It seemed to us there were plenty of human rights organisations documenting abuses, but none actually doing anything about it.”

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“We tell people if you stand up alone you’re at risk; if five of you stand up, you’re at risk, But if we stand up in our thousands, they can’t do anything,” said Zvorwadza.

“There are around 45,000 police, of which maybe 5,000 are bad guys. The rest want to do their job. What we want to do is start weeding them out and naming them so they can no longer hide behind the cloak of the system and will be living in fear.”

The plan is to hold demonstrations outside offending officers’ homes and workplaces, and to sue them, working with Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.

...

Few see any likelihood of a Ukraine-style uprising. “It’s like asking people in intensive care, why aren’t you protesting,” said Coltart.

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The weakness of this idea is that too many people in control of Zimbabwe are incapable of shame starting at the top with the despicable Robert Mugabe who is easily one of the worst leaders of any country in the world.

However, it is hard not to wish them well. They certainly have a lot of courage. What they are doing is a start on holding people accounting. In Zimbabwe that has to pass for progress.