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“What shall we say and do
When they use violence as a tool
To keep their elite few
In top rule
Shunning majority rule
And treating the majority as one fool
What shall we say and do”
Logic and not magic tells me that for campaigns against crime and violence to be effective in Zimbabwe we need first to restore the rule of law and stop the law of rule. The judiciary must be depoliticized. Day after day, minute after minute, minister after minister and leader after leader continue to silently walk to the grave yard to bury the little moral fabric and legal power left in our judiciary system. This march from somewhere to nowhere must stop now and the march from somewhere to somewhere must honestly and earnestly begin.
The government has become the nerve centre of the causes of crime and violence in Zimbabwe. It goes without saying, actually it is mind boggling how we can come to expect to reduce crime and violence when people are living in an economically violent environment. Everything about life in Zimbabwe is now violent. The economic, social, and political environment is too violent for anyone to play any meaningful role in crime and violence prevention. The Zimbabwean environment right now naturally motivates people to commit crimes in order to survive. With the country having been reduced from the bread basket of Africa to a basket case crime has actually become a basic survival skill. The solution is therefore to make sure that the nerve centre catches a cold so that the whole nation can sneeze crime and violence away.
I must at this point emphasise that this struggle should not be about replacing one individual with another. It should never be about personalities, never about people’s ages but the age of their ideas. It is about replacing tired evil systems that have been tried and tested and failed for the past twenty eight years with better systems we can trust against crime and violence. This should not be limited to Zimbabwe only, it should be done across Africa, across the world. The reason why Robert Mugabe can afford to conduct a violent one man shame of an election and continue to stay with full approval and blessings of other SADC and AU leaders within their midst is not because he is wise or intelligent and invincible. It is because most of them are presiding over evil systems. Their hands are full of crimes against humanity, they are corrupt, they have blood, they steal and they have killed or have potential to kill for power’s sake. They are birds of the same feather.
The struggle against violence and crime should therefore make our leaders and other gate keepers prime targets. Once these are converted and begin to walk the talk then a conducive environment for youths to play any meaningful role would result. All the other factors can then come to play. We can then start to effectively use sport as a means of fighting crime and violence. We as artists, as weapons of mass instruction, as sirens and human rights megaphones can start to effectively ring and make loud holy noise against violence. We will begin to be able to take our campaigns and information to people’s doorsteps in a language they do not only understand but enjoy listening to. Unless and until that is done I see us fighting a battle that we intend to lose.
We are willing tools in the struggle against violence in our cities, infact we feel duty bound and believe that it is our generational mandate to reduce crime and violence. It’s just unfortunate that the vessels against crime and violence are leaking from the top. As summit participants, we found ourselves in the situation that the Organisation of African Unity found itself in 1963. Heads of governments met and an organization was formed, the Organisation of African Unity. The name was indeed appropriate, no unity had been achieved, only a declaration to work for it. Much remained to be done to achieve unity, much also remains to be done to get rid of crime and violence.
Michael Mabwe is the founder of Contradictions Arts for Development Trust (CADET) And is also the Coordinator of Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights (ZPHR). He is writing in his personal capacity and can be contacted at zimphr@gmail.com
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Michael
Michael Mabwe is a young poet, human rights activist based in Zimbabwe. He is the founder of Contradictions Arts for Development Trust(CADET) which operates the Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights initiative.He can be contacted on zimphr@gmail.com
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