Home Affairs Min Makone says ZANU PF holding police captive
By Tichaona Sibanda
20 September 2010
Co-Home Affairs Minister Theresa Makone on Monday launched a tirade against
ZANU PF for ‘virtually holding the Zimbabwe Republic Police captive.’
In an outburst directly aimed at her coalition partners in government, the
minister said she was ‘disgusted and sickened’ by ZANU PF’s thuggery during
the constitutional outreach program.
Responding to weekend reports that police did nothing to stop ZANU PF
supporters from the violence that disrupted outreach meetings in Harare, the
co-Home Affairs minister said the police were just as paralysed as most
victims of political violence.
‘If anyone of them (police) dares do what they’re supposed to do, they are
the ones who will end up in worse trouble. We’ve got a captive police that
is not allowed to do its job which it knows best,’ Makone said.
The minister added; ‘Until such a time when we have a comprehensive security
sector reform as espoused in the Global Political Agreement we will never
get an effective police force.’
‘It’s not that they are ignorant of it or that they don’t know how to do it
but if they dare arrest ZANU PF supporters they will be in as much trouble.
They get their instructions from the ZANU PF hierarchy,’ she said.
Makone, the MDC chairperson of the women’s assembly, said following events
of this week, the whole world can see what they have been saying all along,
that trying to work with ZANU PF does not work.
‘It’s a party whose principals are based on violence. They’ve not changed
their way of doing things, so people should not expect those outside the
party to change it for them,’ she added.
Asked to respond to reports that a few weeks ago she vouched for the police,
saying they have turned over a new leaf as opposed to being partisan.
‘I never said that. I was misquoted in that article. What I really said was
that the wheels of justice were moving so slowly and that things are
beginning to happen slowly. Anything else about the police being
professional was a misrepresentation of facts,’ said Makone.