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Riot Gear Or Medication

Writer's picture: rutendo matinyararerutendo matinyarare


I have heard a lot said by many people about the fact that the government chose to buy riot gear over medication and other basic necessities.


However, I think it’s important that our nation addresses all national issues according to their level of priority and risk to the nation.


Yes, healthcare seems like an overriding priority right now, but when you put it alongside national security, it becomes secondary and here are the reasons why.


The recurring prospect of soldiers firing live ammunition on protestors and killing more Zimbabweans has to be addressed with urgency.


And the one feasible way of doing that is by the nation procuring proper crowd control equipment to ensure the humane management of protests.


Otherwise we risk opening up the country to human rights violation claims, civil war and or foreign intervention, which will further destroy the country, burdening the same healthcare and claiming more human lives.


Now, considering that many protests are being planned by the opposition in #TheFinalPush to overthrow the government.


It’s really vital that we have this equipment to manage those engagements in a manner that avoids an escalation to a humanitarian intervention by the west. No matter how it might be manipulated by the media, this is a priority for our national survival.


We DON’T WANT THE ARMY ON THE STREETS, but we also don’t want a government that doesn’t deal with violent regime change protests because those are the biggest threat to national security more than hospitals without medicine.


We all know that sanctions are using collective punishment of the Zimbabwean people to make life very uncomfortable for them. So as to weaponize their pain and emotions into violent protests, sit-ins and civil disobedience.


The intention there is to sustain the protests to either force members of the army and security services to mutiny or push them to engage protestors with live ammunition. Thereby creating grounds for foreign intervention and regime change as planned by the funders behind the protests.


If protests and civil unrest are the weapon being used and we know that. We surely can’t mitigate them by symbolically putting medicines in the hospitals, but it needs the specific solution for crowd management.


That’s because what will drive people onto the streets won’t be healthcare specifically, but many other issues that this government has failed to address because of the restrictions brought by illegal sanctions.


Therefore, protests will happen even if we symbolically get medication [assuming we can get them] for the hospitals, and so the question is how do we deal with them in a manner that preserves the nation?


To avoid the combination of sanctions, protests and unrest changing regime. We will need to neutralize protests, while teaching our fellow citizens to unite and seek solutions against these illegal sanctions. Rather than us dividing the nation and fighting each other for an enemy after our wealth.


Regime change is not going to solve the underlying problem in Zimbabwe, which is western capitalists who desire to control our resources by incapacitating our nation’s ability to use those same resources


In fact, regime change will likely cause future instability and unrest as Mnangagwa is beginning to see with the sabotage coming from Grace Mugabe, G40 cabal and cartels.


We don’t need the west imposing leaders on us by underhanded tactics but we need our nation to chart its own path.


On the issue of medicines not being available in hospitals. It’s not imaginary that medication and medical equipment are not so easy to get in nations under sanctions. Even if those nations want to procure them, because medication and medical equipment are being used to sanction by western nations.


The US government was taken to the ICJ by Iran last year and it was found guilty of violating human rights by using medication as a tool for sanctions.


This is besides the fact that sanctioning a nation reduces a government’s sources of income to buy the same medications. Pushing governments to have to choose between buying riot gear to stop the nation from imploding and life saving medication.


All because of the economic crisis and division caused by sanctions, often referred to by many as economic weapons of mass destruction.


A report on Venezuela by Center for Economic Policy Research found that more than 100 000 Venezuelans have died from lacking access to hypertension, diabetes, HIV, antibiotics and other such chronic medication.


With those they have also seen deaths from people needing life support or access to trauma surgery because of an absence of equipment, doctors and electricity.


Ultimately, support for sanctions by many Zimbabweans who pretend to be concerned about medication. While knowing well that sanctions cause collective suffrage, deprivation and us fighting each other instead of the outside enemy who seeks to destroy our capacity to develop for their own nation. Is part of the bigger problem.


I struggle to understand how people pretend to be human rights proponents but still support illegal, collective punishment of civilians to bring political change aimed at giving our resources over to imperialists.


Its difficult to understand that kind of thinking because surely such people have taken sides with the enemy by permitting division and infighting for conquest to prize our resources.


Are collective human rights violations upon an entire nation that impact the most vulnerable members of our society, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, insignificant and not worthy of standing up against because of our political differences?


Is the displacement of millions of Zimbabweans who are not politicians, not touching our collective conscience to the extent that we pretend like corruption is more problematic than the blatant, sustained economic assault on the nation to cause death and conflict?


- Rutendo Matinyarare

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