IT is very ironic that while the US is pontificating about unsubstantiated human rights violations in Zimbabwe, their white police officers are shooting blacks, as if for fun, in their own country.
As the NewsDay of Tuesday’s main story was quoting American Ambassador to Harare, Brian Nichols, lambasting human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, US white police officers were pumping seven bullets into the back of a black civilian.
This time, the crime of Zimbabwe is the arresting of their blue-eyed boy Hopewell Chin’ono for alleged incitement of public violence.
His case has already been taken to the courts.
Our gripe with the US this time, is the callous firing of seven shots into the back of Job Blake, a Black-American, at point-blank range.
And to make it more gruesome, this was in full view of his children.
This incident comes on the heels of the fatal shooting of George Floyd, another black-American, by a white police officer.
To Ambassador Nichols we ask: Is there a human right which supersedes that of the right to life?
The attitude of US white police officers towards blacks demonstrates naked racism.
We are not sure whether Ambassador Nichols, himself a Black-American, accepts that black lives in the US don’t matter.
Is treating another race as inferior, what the mighty US considers democracy and respect of human rights?
They even go beyond that.
To look at another human being and unilaterally decide his life does not matter simply because of his colour is devilish.
Just like the murder of Floyd, the shooting of Blake has stirred spontaneous protests.
Compare this with the planned protests of July 31 by Jacob Ngarivhume and his like-minded regime change advocates.
This was premeditated subversion, with the intention of violently overthrowing a constitutionally elected Government, the Arab Spring style.
Obviously any responsible Government, which considers the maintenance of law and order as its ultimate responsibility, will not just watch idly with folded arms.
That is why those who were deemed to be the inciters of this proposed insurrection had to have their day in court.
Not a single shot was fired by Zimbabwe’s law enforcement agents, in the face of this planned anarchy.
And yet Ambassador Nichols goes on top of Mount Everest to proclaim to all and sundry that there is ‘deepening crisis’ in Zimbabwe.
Who doesn’t know that the majority of challenges Zimbabwe is facing today, are a result of the illegal economic sanctions imposed by the US.
It is the height of hypocrisy for the US to invoke the intervention of SADC to help save the same Zimbabwe from the ‘deepening crisis’.
SADC knows the detrimental effects of sanctions, not only to Zimbabwe, but also to the region.
That is why the regional body has set October 25, annually, as a day to show solidarity with Zimbabwe in calling for the illegal US sanctions to be lifted.
The US must lift those evil sanctions and the economic transformation Ambassador Nichols is talking about will be phenomenal.
Ambassador Nichols talks about the need for dialogue, pretending he does not know anything about POLAD, a negotiating forum open to all political parties in Zimbabwe, the MDC-A included.
Just because the US surrogates have opted out is no fault of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
After all, the President’s open door policy, which also welcomes civic groups and churches is well known.
Ambassador Nichols’ apparent concern about Zimbabwe’s record for human rights is a diversionary tactic aimed at drawing attention away from the US.
There is serious ‘deepening crisis’ of a racial nature in the US.
We advise Ambassador Nichols to first attend to the log in his country’s eye, before running hysterical about the speck in Zimbabwe’s eye.