Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Killers forgiven but not forgotten

Killers forgiven but not forgotten
*Frank Muti - Opinion
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:46:00 +0000

DEAR EDITOR - More than 50,000 black Zimbabweans perished at the hands of Selous Scouts like Roy Bennett, mercenaries like Eddie Cross and Smith's other terror groups during the war of liberation.

Chemical weapons such as napalm were used and biological weapons such as anthrax and cholera were also used. Food crops, drinking water and livestock were poisoned. Captured freedom fighters who were alive were left dangling and suspended from hovering helicopters. This was intended to instill fear in the general populace.

Black school children were forced to see mutilated bodies of captured freedom fighters.

Whole villages were razed to the ground by carpet bombing and people buried alive.

The art of necklacing used in xenophobic attacks in South Africa last year, i.e putting a burning rubber wheel around the neck of a person till they were burned to death, was perfected by the Selous Scouts in Zimbabwe when they used the technique on black Zimbabweans.

Torture, murder, rape and hanging were all part of the arsenal used by the Selous Scouts, mercenaries etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We cannot have the perpetrators of such past crimes to teach Zimbabweans about democracy? We cannot have such crimes against humanity swept under the carpet?

There was genocide in Zimbabwe and the world looked the other way.

The expose of Bennett is the right thing to do because Roy Bennett and Eddie Cross are senior members of Tsvangirai's MDC-T party and they are influencing policy in that party.

Zimbabwean newspapers should expose these elements. We should expose the history of Morgan Tsvangirai, Eddie Cross and Giles Mutsekwa (and his connection with Smith's police), and other so-called pro-democracy activists who worked in Smith's regime to ensure that black majority rule never saw the light of day.

These latter day democrats are not what they seem to be. Tsvangirai is being provocative in his nomination of Bennett as a deputy minister of agriculture given his very chequered history. There are millions of Zimbabweans still alive who suffered greatly at the hands of the Selous Scouts. Bennett was offered the hand of reconciliation in 1980 and people were prepared to move on and forgive, but not forget.

But when the same character surfaces thirty years later spouting nonsense about the rule of law and human rights, then his past victims have all the right to expose his past crimes.

Bennett should slither back to where he came from, become a private citizen and not a public figure. Afterall, he is a convicted criminal who served in a Zimbabwean jail He should not be afforded the opportunity to become a public figure.

His crimes are too many to be forgotten. If Bennett has any moral fibre, he would take this advice and disappear from the Zimbabwean political scene along with his cheque book that has had a toxic influence on Zimbabwean politics.

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*Frank Muti is an acronym for a Zimbabwe Guardian contributor.

Labels: RHODESIA, ROY BENNETT, SELOUS SCOUTS, WAR CRIMES

posted by MrK @ 5:44 PM