Peddling lies a ruinous strategy

It is still vivid in everyone’s mind, how Christpowers Maisiri’s death was used, without conscience, for political expediency.
Some organisations, having emptied their bags of lies, have resorted to recycling the tired falsehoods that never worked to their satisfaction when they were initially used.

Aids-Free World, a US based organisation recently went into their archives of mendacity to retrieve some packages of lies for use during the recent International Women’s Day held at the United Nations Office in Geneva.

The Co-Director of the organisation, Stephen Lewis made some scathing remarks that focused mainly on frivolous allegations that Zanu-PF members, mostly youths and the war veterans, raped several women who supported MDC-T in 2008.

Lewis said his organisation documented the alleged rape cases and produced a comprehensive report which was accompanied by videos.
The videos captured the alleged rape victims narrating their imagined ordeals.

However, the faceless victims had a Nigerian accent that exposed the whole game plan.
The identities of the imagined rape victims were hidden for security reasons, but for fear that viewers would easily see through the political gimmick that was hatched at the behest of Betty Makoni, the Director of Girl Child Network Worldwide.

Apart from the Nigerian brogue, the hired ‘rape victims’, who were said to have hailed from remote areas such as Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe, Buhera, Dotito and Gokwe among others, spoke fluent English.

While Zimbabwe prides itself in high literacy level, the magnitude portrayed in the videos was so embroidered that it sold out that the alleged victims were hired and coached mercenaries.

For Lewis to expect that people would believe that women from Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe can speak smooth English effortlessly is an insult to our intelligence.
No wonder why the United Nations paid no attention to the doctored rape dossier. In December 2010, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1960 in which it asked the UN Secretary-General to include in his annual reports, detailed information on parties that are suspected of committing or being responsible for rape or other forms of sexual violence.

In January this year, as a response to the request, the Secretary-General submitted a report in which countries like Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan were named as culprits responsible for campaigns of rape.

Zimbabwe was missing despite the dossier that Lewis had manufactured.
Again, Zimbabwe was missing on the list of countries where sexual violence is prevalent in post-conflict situations.
Such exemption riled Lewis who, in his remarks demanded explanations.

The simple explanation for Mr Lewis is that his artificial and poorly crafted dossier does not merit the inclusion of Zimbabwe on the lists.
The US-based NGO even went on to mischievously say that Zimbabwe’s human rights record is worse than that of Syria, where hundreds of people are butchered daily.

This parallel can be understood in the context that there has been evidence of high level of military collaboration between the US and Syria.
As part of its ‘extraordinary rendition’ policy, the US has been sending terror suspects to Syria so as to subject them to torture and other abusive methods of interrogation which are illegal in the US. For this reason, Lewis has a soft spot for Syria.

Lewis lied that every woman in Zimbabwe who dares to support the opposition faces persecution.
We don’t know of any woman who was attacked for political reasons save for Trudy Stephenson, who was nearly killed by MDC-T thugs for her decision to join Professor Welshman Ncube’s splinter formation.

Women have all the political freedoms in Zimbabwe with some, foreigners like Beatrice Mtetwa for that matter, abusing it to an extent of calling the law enforcement agents ‘Mugabe’s dogs.’
Lewis claimed that the High Court of Gauteng in South Africa and the South African Police Service had agreed to open a cross border investigation into the alleged rape.
The investigation will be done under a legal principle of universal jurisdiction.

Before Lewis celebrates, he must refer back to a similar case where white former commercial farmers sought to get justice from the same judiciary and were given false hopes.
Tasking SAPS for such a responsibility makes a mockery of the whole probe, considering that its own human rights record is in shambles.
How can SAPS carry out the cross border probe when its hands are still dripping blood of the 34 strikers it butchered at Marikana Mine last August?

The same police recently tied a taxi driver to a van and dragged him until he died.
In this regard, South African Police is actually the embodiment of gross human rights violations.