This is why the COI tries faint heartedly and suggests that campaign speeches of the MDC heightened tensions and contributed to violence. The MDC supporters have been recipients of gratuitous violence from both Zanu PF and the state as these two institutions are unfortunately conflated.
The conflation of Zanu PF and the state in the history of Zimbabwe has resulted in the unfortunate systemic and serial killing of civilians seen as opposition from immediately after independence to now. The Gukurahundi experiences in the 80s; the targeting of white farmers and hundreds of thousands of farm workers in the early 2000s; Operation Murambatsvina (drive away the filth) in 2005 that left more than 1.5 million people homeless; post-election violence in 2008 with widespread and systematic extra-judicial killings are some of the examples of the result of this conflation of party and state.
This is why the Commission ends up finding that the election was free and fair despite all evidence to the contrary that had been presented to them specifically from credible election observer missions.
The deliberate failure or omission to implement the constitution is part of a process that Zanu PF uses to reduce our electoral process into a charade meant to use electoral democracy as an instrument to acquire state power and place it at the hands of a small cabal that has conflated security, executive and economic power to the detriment of Zimbabwe’s development.
In short the report has several contradictions, it waters down its own findings for the purposes of exonerating the ruling elite from doing.
And even worse the report was released by a subject of the investigation thereby bringing doubts on whether it wasn’t doctored. The accused in essence read his own judgement and expects the victims to be satisfied.
Jacob Mafume
MDC National Spokesperson
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