(HERALD) Selous Scouts are back

Selous Scouts are back
By Peter Mavunga

THE Selous Scouts are back with a vengeance. With modern weaponry, 4x4s and much forex, they are back to kill, maim and torture the rural folks of Zimbabwe. Then they take pictures and distribute them on the World Wide Web as evidence of Zanu-PF-inspired atrocities in the so-called Operation Mavhotera Papi.

I received one such e-mail this week. It carried pictures of dead bodies with untold injuries; mutilated bodies depicting hideous cruelty. The running commentary suggested the Zanu-PF militia did it as a revenge against the rural people for daring to vote for and celebrating an MDC victory and to ensure they vote for President Mugabe in the run-off.

Curiously enough, the atrocities seem to have been targeted at recent resettlements where one of the victims is said to have been forced to tie himself in the neck with a rope, climb a tree, tie the other end of the rope to a tree and then jump. A CIO agent is said to have ordered the family to bury the body while taking away with him the postmortem report.

Now I understand that the new American ambassador in the company of MDC people has been to see a number of such torture camps. It is said they found a proper torture camp, complete with exercise books listing names of targets strewn around. The subtext is that the CIO agents are so inept they do these things and leave evidence to be discovered. And the world has been told and conditioned into believing that only Mugabe’s agents commit these atrocities. One of the pictures on the Internet has a caption that simply says: "This is unacceptable", implying as given the fact that CIO agents did it.

And that is not a difficult assertion to make. The people carrying out the atrocities are black people, not their white counterparts who fund them. There are many who enjoy being used in this way. After all, there is money in it for them and the satisfaction of discrediting President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF all the way to the UN is all too mouthwatering to miss.

But I think we should stick to what is already known and apply some logic to it rather than be so gullible. The people who committed atrocities in our country were the Rhodesians. Back in 1975 Father Dieter Scholz, a German Jesuit serving as deputy chairman of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, left Salisbury for London carrying dossiers on atrocities committed by the security forces.

On arrival he found that the vital manuscript had been removed from his suitcase by the Rhodesian CID. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards "The Man in the Middle" was published. This report brought to the public attention for the first time the appalling conditions prevailing in the protected villages and the brutal methods employed by the security forces in the war zones.

At the same time the Justice and Peace Commission lawyers were preparing private legal action against Desmond Lardner-Burke, the Minister of Law and Order. To put paid to these threatened legal actions, the government rushed through its notorious Compensation and Indemnity Act.

John Wrathall, as president, explained to the House of Assembly: "It is unfortunately inevitable that anti-terrorist activity by the security forces sometimes causes injury and loss to civilians. It is wrong that bona fide actions done in the national interest should lead to litigation against those alleged to be responsible."

On July 2 1976, Van der Byl told the House that villages found harbouring guerrillas "will be bombed and destroyed in any manner which the commander on the spot considers desirable".

On July 22 1976 black and white soldiers surrounded a house at Mtize Chikata Kraal, Mutoko. They set up office in one of the huts and proceeded to interrogate the villagers one by one including a boy, Athanasio Mutikiti. After some time another boy came running to Athanasio’s father to ask him if his son ever had fits — in any case Athanasio had just died.

The soldiers allowed the father inside the hut where Athanasio lay stripped naked and soaking wet. The soldiers explained that they had wanted to keep him cool; the body was removed to Bindura Hospital; the father was told his son had died from a blocked windpipe "when the fit began".

They paraded young children before corpses routinely. It happened, for instance, at Chikore Mission School, 230 kilometres south of Mutare, when on three occasions pupils were shown bodies which the security forces had brought to the school and dumped in the parking lot — genitals exposed, fingers cut off from the knuckles, horrifying. Not surprisingly 140 of the school’s 380 pupils responded to this treatment by walking across the border into Mozambique in July 1976, whereupon the government closed the school and expelled five teachers.

This is but a small segment of the atrocities the Rhodesians perpetrated against civilians. They could do so with impunity. They did not need the African vote. Many of our young people born after independence may not appreciate that under white rule, black people had no vote that could influence who would be in government or who should be prime minister.

That was the privilege of the white person, few though they were. And because they controlled the army, the police and all the rest of it, they imposed their will on the majority of black people in the country. That is why they could terrorise pupils of Chikore Mission School or villagers in the so-called protected villages in Chiweshe and killing hundreds of young people like Athanasio.

The point is that they did not need the black person’s vote. In terms of elections, black people were dispensable, objects that could be discarded as unwanted rubbish. The purpose of torturing them and parading dead corpses in front of young, impressionable children was to cow everyone else into submission. Everyone had to accept the status quo. The white man should rule forever. As Ian Smith famously said, he did not believe in black majority rule, not in a thousand years.

But for the pupils of Chikore Mission School, to use them as an example, enough was enough. They wanted to go out there and fight for the right to vote. I know they went out there to fight for more than just a right to vote, but I’ll keep it simple here. They wanted the right to vote, the right to determine how they are governed.

And that is how everyone in Zimbabwe got their right to vote: through fighting. Is it not a terrible indictment of those who purported to champion the so-called civilised standards that they were prepared to go to great lengths to protect their privileges. But my point here is that they did not need the black vote so they could afford to commit atrocities with impunity. Since independence, however, the Government of Zimbabwe has been chosen by popular vote. No section of the population has special privileges or status in terms of choosing the leader or government. Everyone’s vote is the same.

More importantly, Zimbabwe has not skipped elections. Democracy has never been suspended. Voters have been consulted every five years to decide who should govern them. And getting elected requires persuasion. Unlike the Rhodesian Selous Scouts, Zimbabwe’s security forces cannot afford to alienate the voters. To suggest that the Zanu-PF Government is involved in torturing the people they want them to vote for them defies any logic. It simply does not add up.

The facts are that one of the greatest achievements of the Patriotic Front which now governs Zimbabwe was to bring Zimbabwe one man one vote to everyone. And everyone knows that in order to be voted for, you have to persuade the electorate that your point of view is the right one. Now we are being asked to believe that the Zimbabwe Government’s strategy to win the presidential run-off is by torturing the voters. Give me a break.

The truth is that those opposed to the Government are not interested in the run-off. Their single purpose now is to discredit the electoral process in Zimbabwe all the way to the UN. The strategy is to ensure the allegations against Mugabe of torture do stick. With the British and the Americans in the chair at the UN in rapid succession, the strategy is to persuade the world that Zimbabwe society has broken down to a point where foreign intervention is justified.

It is a pathetic ploy by unscrupulous people bent of achieving their own ends irrespective of the wishes of the people they are constantly manipulating. The International Crisis Group is now calling for immediate African mediation leading to a National Unity Government led by Tsvangirai.

Part of our problem is that too many people poke their noses in Zimbabwe’s business instead of minding theirs. The other part of the problem is that too many of us are so gullible and so easily conquered with the lure of forex.

Zanu-PF has maintained peace in the country through its unity. They should remain united as they were during the armed struggle. And knowing that the Selous Scouts are back should, I hope, give them greater impetus for unity of purpose.