THE ZIMBABWE
PEACE PROJECT
The year 2020 has been difficult for many Zimbabweans,
and the COVID-19 pandemic has gone beyond being just
a health issue; not just in this country, but in the Southern
African region and the entire continent.
COVID-19
pandemic has
gone beyond
being just a
health issue;
not just in this
country, but in
the Southern
African region
and the entire
continent.
The disaster has stirred, or rather become a source of a
socio-economic and political crisis and the measures
instituted to contain it have exposed and worsened
human rights violations such as abusive law enforcement
practices,
unlawful detentions,
arbitrary
arrests,
abductions and killings targeting human rights defenders.
This level of intolerance for dissent reached its peak in
November, when on the 5th, Zanu PF Acting
Spokesperson, Patrick Chinamasa, addressed a press
conference,
and
threatened
civil
society
organisations(CSOs), calling them American and British
“surrogates and psycophants,” and that Zanu PF would
use its Parliamentary majority to crush them, adding that
they should “go hang.”
The statements were not a surprise as they are part of a
growing disdain for civil society by the ruling party and
government, characterized by open and subtle threats
increasingly shrinking civic space.
Chinamasa’s statements come on the back of recent
pronouncement by President Emmerson Mnangagwa,
where he was quoted in a newspaper, hinting that his
government would soon craft a law to whip ‘errant’ CSOs
into line.
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