Resist, Reject and Report Violence, #RRRV2023
MASTERY OF FEAR
Short poem
by Chiedza Mlingwa.
Something is in the air. Something menacing.
The air grows thicker with its presence.
We squint, trying to discern from the haze an encroaching threat.
What is it? It draws closer still.
It fills the air, pervasive and insidious… it smells like fear.
Finally, it settles. We wear it now like second skin.
Gripped by fear
It is months away from the harmonised elections and fear permeates the air making it
oppressive; the atmosphere is one that does not call for mirth.
He lies helplessly on the ground as the blows rain down heavily and indiscriminately on
his frail, old frame. The subject of this vicious and senseless attack that occurred in the
Bhunu Village in Murehwa North, is 74-year-old senior citizen, Morris Seremani. At some
point, the perpetrators step on his head during the beatings. A video recording
(apparently taken by the perpetrators themselves) of Seremani, his wife, and other
opposition political party Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) supporters, some of them
elderly men and women, being viciously flogged brought this ruthless attack to light on 7
January 2023. The video, which soon went viral and attracted widespread condemnation
from various civil society actors, became the first documented incident of politically
motivated violence in the New Year, a few months away from the 2023 general elections.
While Zimbabwe’s protracted history with political and/or electoral violence is by now
well documented, the attack nonetheless added yet another blight upon the nation’s
psyche. Outside of the human rights discourse, abuse of the elderly, particularly of such
a brutal nature, is, from a cultural perspective, an unheard-of abomination. One would
have expected the youths who carried out this attack to have been aware of this. After
all, they too, come from parents - the recipients of their callous onslaught could very well
have been their own mbuya (grandmother) or sekuru (grandfather).
This incident is, however, not the first time that the country has had a problem with
political and/or electoral violence. The occurrence of this incident was therefore in and of
itself hardly surprising as violence in Zimbabwe (whether physical, structural and/or
cultural) usually escalates in the lead up to, during and shortly after the occurrence of
major political events in the country.
January 2023
The Zimbabwe Peace Project Monthly Monitoring Report
12