Blogging for Sky News - our Tuesday entry
Sokwanele was invited to blog for Sky News this week on The Insider Blog. The Sky audience is much wider and far more diverse than ours, so we encourage you to visit The Insider Blog and please participate in the comments and discussion being generated there.
Our Tuesday entry for ‘The Insider Blog’
People are talking about the recent news that Angola had agreed to send 2,500 police militia to boost the Zimbabwean Police Force.
The Angolan government has denied this, but no one believes they’re telling the truth.
Zimbabweans have lost trust with governments in the SADC region, and we think they might lie for Mugabe and secretly help him keep us oppressed. The memory of the stolen elections, which were declared free and fair by South Africa, still feels very fresh. How can we trust them to help us?
In my area, Matabeleland, around 20,000 civilians were killed in the early 1980s during Mugabe’s military operation code-named ‘Gukuruhundi’. Many more were brutally tortured.
The Fifth Brigade who carried out the vicious murders were trained by the North Koreans. The cruelty and types of things they did to people defy civilised imaginations.
I know people who are still psychologically scarred by witnessing atrocities and living with fear. I have a friend whose mother still suffers from pain caused by torture injuries inflicted on her more than twenty years ago.
So when we hear talk of foreign forces coming in to ‘help’ Mugabe, that’s the first thing that comes to mind for those of us who live in Matabeleland. We are even more alarmed when we hear that the Angolan police militia are referred to as ‘ninjas’ because of their brutal tactics.
I should be objective about this and say ‘it has been denied by the Angolan government so it’s probably just a rumour’. But like most of the people in my area of Zimbabwe I don’t trust the regional leaders to stop an injustice BEFORE it happens, so I regard any comment by regional leaders with suspicion.
Like everyone in Matabeleland, I know it as an absolute fact that Mugabe is capable of murdering civilians on a mass scale. It has happened before.
I hope the world is wiser now than it was decades ago, and I hope it doesn’t react too slowly on this issue. If Angola does send militia police to Zimbabwe, I hope the world knows that that means bloodshed for innocent people.
March 28th, 2007 12:15
Mugabe has a history of violence. He uses the devide and rule principle, by causing divisions amongst people and let them rise against each othe and treat each other as enemies. In short Mugabe is evil, a coward and above all a dictator. There has never been democracy in Zimbabwe. Since indipendence people have been indimidated, beaten up and forced to support Zanu PF. He has got secret militias who are paid lots of moner to beat up people opposed to his rule. The Angolan government can deny the rumor about these militias but its true these ninjas are coming. Mugabe has so much blood on his hands and he is not afraid to kill. He is not yet ready to give up and in as far as I am concerned he is going to stay till he dies. Even the leadership in his party are tired of him but he always appoint new faces in key positions who will do whatever it takes to plaease him. It will need more than dialogue to get him out of office. The people of Zimbabwe can not do it alone because they are so devided, thay need help from Africa nad the rest of the world. South Africa has let the people of Zimbabwe down because thay believe in him and blesses his evil ways. Some people think he is indispensible.