Background

Hello all,

Zimbabwe is facing an election now, which we all hope will bring the much needed change. There is much coverage on the news about the terror and ridiculous conditions there - I will, as I go along and learn more about how to post all the various items, provide links to the various sources of news - although I do not wish to make them the main focus of this blog. There are a great many places on the web focusing on this already! I am a serving policeman, although currently outside Zimbabwe (I still have close daily connections within the force and have a very good knowledge of what is happening) and I would like to bring an in sight into what used to be an incredible police force and what has gone wrong. I also wanted to try and publish what I see as a path to getting the police out of the grip of Mugabe and ZANU-PF and back to being the national police.

I hope to include a great deal of diversity in what I post, including personal anecdotes, some background to what is happening on the ground as well as making comments on news items from my standpoint as a police officer. I will approach the news items as though these were incidents reported to me and what action should be taken by a police officer in Zimbabwe, according to the law - and by law, I refer to the law that stood prior to the 2000 referendum, where after the regime has ignored and changed the law to suit itself.

At this point in time, it is clear that I am, effectively, sitting on hill and crowing from afar, but I think it is clear that it would be impossible, at this time to do much else. Having said that, however, I can speak for many of my colleagues, on the ground in Zimbabwe, who are now at the end of their tether - and I am hopeful that this election will bring the change that has been hoped for. If it does not, then I think it will be clear that the political route is wholly ineffective and a new approach will have to be sought. I am aware that alternative initiatives are in planning at the moment. I am sure though, that most, if not all of us, would prefer to avoid any route that carries high risk to ourselves and the innocent people of Zimbabwe, whom we are sworn to protect. At some point, however, we have to reach a point where we find that a more acceptable cost than the continuing creeping genocide that is the situation at the moment. Clearly no solution is forthcoming from the international community at large who continue to sit on the sidelines and wring their hands. And hand wringing it most decidedly is - I have, in the past, approached Security agencies of foreign governments with an extremely effective, low cost plan to resolve the situation (without involving any of their personal and, therefore, in my view - the called for Zimbabwean solution to the Zimbabwean problem), or at least provide the basis for resolution - and their response has been the all too familiar deafening silence!

In an effort to avoid huge rambling columns, I will end today's post! More tomorrow!