Average Joe's Blog

The last time Deputy Commissioner General (Crime) Josephine Shambare made efforts to engage the public – in Murehwa District, Mashonaland East Province – her spirits were somewhat deflated by the lukewarm reception she got; there was virtually nobody at the meeting, and the few opinion leaders who were there were not exactly the kind of public Dep Commr Gen Shambare had in mind. She wanted the hoi polloi, the ordinary people in the villages who bore the brunt of their children being mugged, raped or murdered. So the senior cop might have been forgiven for stepping on a Zaka turf with a stifled sense of optimism for a large reception – after all, they say once beaten, twice shy.  But what she saw at the old Zaka Growth Point in Masvingo East Ditrict, Masvingo Province, was nothing short of a pleasant surprise. There were hundreds of people from all walks of life – school children, church organisations, chiefs, headmen, village heads, police officers and many other ordi...

"Mapurisa. Mapurisa. Mapurisa." This was the opening salvo by the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, President Robert Mugabe at the just-ended ZANU-PF People's Conference in Gweru, as he decried the plague that now seems so cancerous, so endemic, so entrenched in the Zimbabwean policing veins that getting rid of it is just akin to killing the foundations of the police force itself. And the president gave a practical example of the alleged misdeeds of police officers, especially on the road. “ Kumisa vanhu mumigwagwa. Mota yako haina mabreaks haungaende mberi. Kana uchida, bhadhara US$200 woenda ,” he said.  The president is also not happy with the moral decadence that has afflicted other government departments, and he mentioned the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority as another body that is failing the nation when it comes to corruption. Such is the nature of our society today that virtually every office one appr...