ED promises 'probe shooting of protestors' - promised free elections but never delivered

When the spokesman of the military coup of 15 November 2017 announced to the world that they had taken over all the country's key institutions of government and had the then President Robert Mugabe under house arrest it was all surreal. Could it be possible that Mugabe was finally being forced out of office after 37 years of sticking to the presidency like a binnacle to a rock.

Thanks to Mugabe's chief enforcer, Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose ruthlessness and vote-rigging abilities have helped to create the de facto one-party state and keep the dictator and Zanu PF in power all these years. The breath-taking incompetent of the opposition MDC had help the dictatorship survive the 2008 to 2013 GNU years when it should have been dismantled.

With no democratic reform in place and Zanu PF safely back in the driving seat it all seemed set that President Mugabe's wish to be life president or also handover power to his ambitious wife was a given. The whole world was therefore astonished to hear his own chief enforcer and his cronies – the very people had broken all the laws to keep the tyrant in power – were kicking the tyrant Mugabe out of office.

"This is not a coup but a military assisted transition!" insisted now Foreign Affairs Minister, Sibusiso Moyo, the spokesperson of the coup plotters.

What was surreal about that statement is that the coup actually expected people to believe this could ever be anything else other than what it was – a military coup. Sadly this has now become a habit of this junta to come up with all manner of outrageous statements no one believes.

"General Philip Valerio Sibanda asked for an explanation from President-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa, his advisers and intelligence chiefs of the events on Aug. 1 that left six people dead in the capital, Harare, and raised questions about who controls the security forces," reported News Day.

"At the meeting with the president, Sibanda, a respected figure who commanded a multinational peace-keeping force in Angola, also wanted to know the identity of armed men dressed in ragtag uniforms that were shown on social media beating people and riding in military vehicles.
 
"He said publicly that no Zimbabwean soldier was ordered to fire on unarmed civilians and no such directive would ever be given."

Are we expected to believe that Zimbabwe was invaded by a group of armed individual in army uniforms and using army trucks and who went on to open fire and killed civilians. A week after the incident, the second most senior commander of the ZDF, second only to the President, still does not know who these armed individual are! If General Sibanda is telling the truth, then he must be one of the most incompetent General in history.

"We're witnessing what are purported soldiers, but they're not soldiers, and we're very busy investigating this," Foreign Minister Sibusiso Moyo, a retired general, said Tuesday by phone. He is the man who announced last November's coup was not a coup; this was just another hen's teeth story.

"Mnangagwa, who was declared the winner of the presidential vote on Aug. 3, told reporters the police were legally entitled to request the army's assistance to maintain public order when they were overwhelmed,"  continued News Day.

"He ignored a question about whether he was told in advance of the deployment and promised to set up an independent probe into the violence."

When questions were coming thick and furious about his role in the Gukurahundi massacre, President Mnangagwa responded by appointing a commission of inquiry. The people know there has been the Judge Chihambakwe report on Gukurahundi and during the GNU years there was a whole ministry with a minister from each of the three partners in the GNU.

There really was no need for President Mnangagwa to appoint yet another commission other than to kick the issue into the tall grass. He is doing exactly the same thing again.