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Pardon Muzavazi Correspondent
Over the past few months, some Zimbabwean opposition parties, human rights activists and even unsolicited one-sided sympathisers such as serving and former United States ambassadors to Zimbabwe have been trying to build a case of human rights abuses against the Government of Zimbabwe.
Their ultimate aim is to use their machinations to remove Zanu PF from power, possibly through an invasion by a foreign force.
One of the areas which they have chosen to use as a nucleus around which to build their case are the allegations of human rights abuse against Government.
During the past three or so years, they have been pushing the police brutality narrative, which they attempted prove by placing provocative, excitable and drunk youths in the path of the police to entrap them into responding harshly.
However, when it became clear that US police was even harsher, especially towards black people, they changed tact.
Fake abductions
They took to planned fake abductions which, without a shred of evidence, were blamed on Government.
The lawyers and human rights activists among the lot were quick to strengthen their case by throwing in phrases like enforced disappearances to excite their ilk in the world and secure their buy-in and support.
On May 13, 2020, they pushed the envelope by having MDC female activists, Cecilia Chimbiri, Joanna Mamombe and Netsai Marova lead a protest in Harare’s Warren Park high-density suburb, flouting the Covid-19 national lockdown requirements, which precluded the gathering of more than 50 people.
The aim was to use the issue to fake their own abductions and further besmirch Government in the eyes of the world.
The case was riddled with inconsistencies and outright falsehoods, but it found takers and supporters in organisations such as the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR).
An account of the story published by www.redress.org on August 27, 2020, supplied by the ZLHR, claimed that the trio was arrested en route to the protest site when, in fact, the activists participated in the illegal protests.
The Mamombe and company drama was not going to be the last one, as the same group of anti-Government elements claimed another abduction of a Bulawayo journalism student, one Tawanda Muchehiwa, to strengthen their narrative of a human rights-based crisis in Zimbabwe.
The hand of the MDC-Alliance was evident again this time around as the party’s Bulawayo provincial women’s organ member, Tendai Masotsha, was implicated in the fake abduction of Muchehiwa.
An analysis of a “crisis” in Zimbabwe, which the country’s detractors such as the MDC-Alliance and its global backers are trying to build on the basis of the emotive issue of human rights, is sitting on shaky legs when compared to other countries, which are being treated as normal by the same people.
The narrative has takers in people such as the misguided South African opposition personalities, Mmusi Maimane, former Democratic Alliance leader and Julius Malema, who leads the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
If one uses their alleged abductions yardstick to determine the existence or lack of a crisis, it becomes evident that these activists’ nations have crisis requiring urgent attention.
Abductions, kidnappings for ransom and what the human rights holier-than-thou activists call enforced disappearances boil to the same thing — the forcible taking of a person against their will by another person or party.
Taking this into consideration, it means that instead of fighting to have Zimbabwe placed on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the basis of alleged abduction, it is South Africa which should be on the agenda first.
This is because according to www.homesecuritysa.com, South Africa is placed second after Somalia in Africa in terms of the prevalence of kidnapping cases.
According to africacheck.org, a child is reported missing every nine hours in South Africa.
The Human Rights Watch website, www.hrw.org reported on July 30 that between April 2017 and March 2020, 170 people were kidnapped for ransom by militant groups near the Virunga National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage site) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In that country, citizens are kidnapped during execution of their normal chores such as weeding in their fields.
This is also prevalent in other areas in the DRC such as Kivu province, where since the beginning of 2020, at least 200 people have been abducted for ransom.
Zimbabwe does not have militant groups and kidnappings at all, except the fake ones orchestrated by the MDC-Alliance and its Western backers.
Surprisingly, Human Rights Watch, the US, Malema, Maimane and others have not sought to have the DRC placed on the UNSC agenda.
Even if one considers the false figure of 49 abductions in Zimbabwe in 2019, which are being bandied about by the likes of ZLHR, Zimbabwe still does not have a crisis.
Elsewhere in the world, other countries which should attract the attention of the groups of people include Bangladesh where Human Rights Watch reported that between January 1, 2009 and July 31, 2020 at least 572 had been abducted.
Even in the US, which strives to position itself as the world’s policeman, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) recorded 609 000 cases of missing people in 2019, which by end of that year had reduced to 87 500.
The bureau also indicated that from 2010 to 2017, 350 people were abducted in the US. Going by these figures, it is the US which has a crisis on its hands.
Needless Western groups
Former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Bruce Warton, and his colleagues in the so-called Zimbabwe Working Group should focus their efforts on their own country and other nations, which are battling with real human rights abuse-based crisis.
Instead of creating shadowy groups and cheekily naming them after Zimbabwe, they should form groups and name them after the US and other countries, which are facing real crisis.
Zimbabwe does not need strange Western groups. It needs sincere friends to partner it in tackling its challenges.
If Western powers are not using the false claims of human rights abuses to drive narrow imperialist agendas against Zimbabwe, they should move their efforts to regional countries facing serious security crisis such as the DRC and Mozambique.
Truth be told, the purported Zimbabwean crisis will remain a social media construct propelled by hashtags such as #ZimbabweanLivesMatter borrowed from the genuine hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which seeks to draw change to the systemic racism that people of colour are subjected to in the US.
Pardon Muzavazi is a researcher and political analyst based in Namibia.
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