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Masvingo Central police among the worst human rights violators in Zimbabwe
Youth Forum
April 29, 2009

Recent events unfolding in the country's oldest city of Masvingo serve to confirm that the police in this town, specifically at Masvingo Central are among the most consistent and worst human rights violators in Zimbabwe. The arrest last week of 22 students from Great Zimbabwe University by police at Masvingo Central following a peaceful demonstration led by ZINASU against exorbitant fees being charged by the university is a clear sign that the police force in this town are still living in an Medieval era with regards to the modern human rights language. The continued detention of the ZINASU secretary for legal affairs Courage Ngwarai and other student leaders from the university is a clear violation of the students' right to freedom of assembly and expression. Furthermore, the ruthless manner in which the police broke up the demonstration is a negation of that right not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment.

Other cases have arisen before where this same police force in Masvingo has displayed behavior that has left a lot of us wondering as to whether this is a genuinely professional force or just a bunch of self-serving thugs dressed in blue and masquerading as law enforcement agents. In September 2007 the same police officers disrupted a Youth Forum public meeting in cahoots with visibly drunk and violent Zanu PF youths, in the process arresting Wellington Zindove the Youth Forum coordinator, Madock Chivasa the Youth Forum board chairperson and NCA Spokesperson, as well as 14 other youths, among them students. The former two were to later spend six days in police detention before being subjected to lengthy court cases that spanned almost one and a half years. It was in 2007 again when the same police officers detained Edison Hlatshwayo then a student leader at the same university again on allegations of inciting students to demonstrate over issues of exorbitant fees among a host of other issues which the university administration was failing to address.

Edison later spent close to two months in Masvingo remand prison before his case was finally thrown out by the courts for want of evidence. Other student leaders among them George Makamure, Brenda Mupfurutsa, Gideon Chitanga and Ogylive Makova have all suffered immensely at the hands of these police officers.

The Youth Forum views this unbridled and continued attack on the rights and fundamental freedoms of students among other youths in Masvingo as an affront to the rule of law and a negation of the core principles of democracy. The Masvingo Central police should not forget that these same students are their sons and daughters and when they rebel against the charging of unjustifiable fees by university authorities they are simply saying that their civil servant and peasant mothers and fathers, among them the police, cannot afford such fees, given the paltry stipends that they take home as allowances. We further urge the coalition government through JOMIC to investigate the top leadership of the police in Masvingo to establish whether they qualify as police officers. We further urge the police officers in Masvingo not to forget that history shall always judge them harshly if they continue on this path of destructive and barbaric law enforcement. Such acts only work to negate the efforts of the coalition government to transform our police force into a truly professional and competent force.

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