- Zimbabwe has once again shot itself in the foot-and in the full glare of international media, for that matter - by deliberately flouting its own laws and throwing caution to the wind just to allow junior Information Minister Jonathan Moyo and the department of immigration to settle old scores.
Who would want to invest in a country with a government which can deport an innocent journalist in total defiance of a court order?
We are here talking about the government's handling of the residence permit issue of Andrew Meldrum, the locally-based correspondent of the British newspaper, 'The Guardian', who was bundled out of Zimbabwe on Friday night even though the High Court had ruled last July that he was a bona fide resident of this country.
There is no doubt that the government, and Minister Moyo, were highly embarrassed after Mr Meldrum successfully challenged their deportation order in the High Court in July last year.
In fact, it might even be now safe to say that the decision to physically remove Mr Meldrum from Zimbabwe must have been taken the day that the High Court overturned his deportation order and allowed him to stay in the country.
It was only a matter of time before President Robert Mugabe's vindictive advisers met to formulate what they believed would be the most appropriate way to deal with the meddlesome Mr Meldrum once and for all.
What could have been a routine matter for the courts to handle, for instance, filing an immediate appeal against the High Court ruling in the Supreme Court, has left the ruling party Zanu PF, Minister Moyo and the department of immigration with egg all over their faces.
The way the government - especially the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Home Affairs and its immigration department - handled the Meldrum affair therefore makes a mockery of Harare's monotonous and tired complains that Zimbabwe does not deserve the bad press it is attracting overseas.
What better way to attract a negative international image can there be than the primitive, amateurish, unlawful and vindictive deportation of an innocent journalist.
Instead of filing an appeal in the Supreme Court, whose bench incidentally is full of President Mugabe appointees, the government chose to apply the law of the jungle; kidnapping the defenceless journalist and physically bundling him into an Air Zimbabwe flight bound for London - all in the full glare of the international media.
Do we need any further testimony that our rulers have gone bonkers and now want to demonstrate to the whole world that the animal called the rule of law is dead and buried in Zimbabwe?
Sadly, the abuse of Mr Meldrum and his family, is not an isolated affair. There have been many Zimbabwean journalists who have been beaten, tortured, harassed, arrested and detained for merely practising their profession.
But the government of President Robert Mugabe must be left in no doubt about the passion and the determination of Zimbabwean journalists to fight on until sanity returns to the country.
In fact, we know of no government in the world today which has benefited from having running battles with a press that cherishes its freedom and vibrancy.
Ordinary Zimbabweans have not fared any better: numerous reports have been carried by the media in this country about the voiceless and powerless who, in the dead of the night, have been pounced upon by state sponsored thugs dressed in police and army uniforms.
The crime that many of these Zimbabweans have committed is that they have dared to complain that they are not being governed properly. It is their own government that is daily abusing them in the townships and the rural areas because Zanu PF believes it is its God-given right to govern or misgovern this country.
After all, we are told every day in the daily lies peddled by the State media, it is Zanu PF that brought independence to this country when it won the 1970s war of independence and so, by extension, it is the only party that should rule Zimbabwe.
But Zanu PF is like the little village bully who rules through fear and violence but who surely one day would have his bluff called. We Zimbabweans must comfort ourselves that indeed Zanu PF's bullying days will soon be over because ordinary people in this country have now decided to expose, once and for all, that the bullying Zanu PF owl has no horns at all and that its day of reckoning is no longer far away.
No amount of posturing, that includes even the ridiculous show of trying to link Zimbabwe's problems to the return of one half of the Zimbabwean bird from Germany, will divert the populace from the real cause of their current misery: the mismanagement of the country by the governing Zanu PF party.
It is only a desperate administration that tries to link a historical artefact that has been rightly returned to its owners, and through dialogue, to the violent way it has addressed very pertinent issues such as land hunger. When things get tough it is no good turning around and blaming everything on internal and external forces.
And it's certainly not Germany, journalists, the colonialists nor the one half of the Zimbabwean bird! It is Mugabe and his governing Zanu PF party. Period.
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