The Sunday Mail
Sunday Mail Reporters
The British and United States governments have escalated their campaign to destabilise Zimbabwe as they seek to bring the country under United Nations scrutiny based on false claims that Zimbabwean authorities are quelling political demonstrations by shooting protesters.
As a build-up to this, two British operatives known for engineering violent street “protests” in North and West Africa were dispatched to Harare in early September, with Western media, led by the CNN following up with sustained coverage of purported “police brutality” and “human rights violations”.
Shadowy groups such as tajamuka are reportedly caucusing regularly in some Harare suburbs under the cover of darkness.
The co-ordinated onslaught is aimed at pummelling Zimbabwe’s economy with fresh European Union sanctions based on the same frivolous claims. Further, it is understood the US embassy in Harare funded career protester Partson Dzamara’s trip to New York to organise demonstrations against President Mugabe when the UN General Assembly opens.
Yesterday, opposition parties under the National Electoral Reform Agenda planned mass protests in the capital’s central business district despite a standing police ban. Though the demonstrations ultimately did not take place, Nera representatives Mr Morgan Komichi (MDC-T) and Mr Jacob Ngaribvume (Transform Zimbabwe) later called a Press conference, claiming police had fired shots at protesters in Harare’s Dzivaresekwa and Kuwadzana suburbs.
This appeared to take a lead from a stage-managed interview that US news channel CNN had with a bogus police officer who claimed Zimbabwe’s law enforcement agents were under instructions to shoot protesters.
On Friday, Home Affairs Minister Dr Ignatius Chombo dismissed the spurious claims, as did national police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Nyathi yesterday.
Chief Supt Nyathi said there were no demonstrations countrywide yesterday, adding, “Nothing of that sort (the purported shooting) occured. Those are complete falsehoods because our officers never fired shots at anyone.
“Generally, the security situation in the country was peaceful. As police, we want to thank the generality of Zimbabweans for not engaging in illegal demonstrations or acts of violence.
“Police will remain alert and would like to warn anyone who either instigates or engages in any form of violence or intimidation that they will be dealt with in terms of the law.”
Last week The Sunday Mail gathered information that British spies Samuel Hamilton Adamson and Gordon Donald Birnie arrived in Zimbabwe on September 5, 2016.
It is believed the two are members of a specialised unit trained to engineer civil unrest in nations where the British seek to depose sitting governments.
One of their major operations was in Liberia in 2003 when violent protests against Charles Taylor culminated in civil war and his ultimate deposition. The pair was also involved in the “Arab Spring” in North Africa in 2011.
Sources told The Sunday Mail that Adamson and Birnie were on a mission to review the civil disturbances that occurred in Harare, Bulawayo and Beitbridge in July/August.
According to the sources, they met officials from the British embassy in Gonarezhou, Victoria Falls and Zambia.
A British embassy official who preferred anonymity tried to downplay the visit by the two spies, saying the operatives were “UK officials”.
“Two UK officials from the Department for Transport visited Zimbabwe as part of a regional visit. Their role is to meet aviation stakeholders and to discuss aviation security,” the official said.
“This is part of the UK’s on-going commitment to work with international partners on aviation security. Any suggestion that the UK government supports violence in Zimbabwe is entirely untrue.”
However, reliable sources said the spies had posed as British government officials simply to gain entry into Zimbabwe.
“Eyebrows were raised when some of the embassy officials indicated that they wanted to travel out of Harare. According to diplomatic protocol, any visit by an embassy official outside Harare should be sanctioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“They only indicated that they wanted to go on holiday. Our intelligence then gathered that the two have a checkered past and have visited other countries such as Liberia where they are suspected to have been linked to civil disturbances in West Africa.”
Tellingly, a key point of the European Parliament’s draft resolution of September 15, 2016 “expresses serious concern about the increase in violence against demonstrators in Zimbabwe in recent months”, something, analysts say, suggests the West was colluding to make Zimbabwe a UN agenda item.
Another line “urges the Zimbabwean authorities to investigate allegations of excessive use of force and other human rights abuses by elements within the Zimbabwe police, and to hold them to account”.
Western collusion, according to analysts, is also betrayed where the draft resolution “calls for a peaceful transition of power based on a free and fair electoral process” and “urges” Sadc to interfere with Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs — both lines parotted by the Group of Elders in the lead-up to last month’s 36th Sadc Summit of Heads of State and Government.
The draft resolution also advocates sanctions on Zimbabwe based on the false claims.
Dzamara who travelled to New York on US funds last week petitioned the World Bank not to provide any financial assistance to the Zimbabwe Government.
Part of the petition read, “. . .It is, therefore, with confidence in the justness of our cause, and trust that your institution would not commit such an irresponsible mistake, that I ask on behalf of my organisation, our friends and partners, and Zimbabwe as a whole, that you would not extend or be in any way complicit in extending a financial lifeline to an administration culpable of such crimes against its own citizens.”
Dzamara and his protest partner Evan Mawarire went on to stage a monumental flop of a demonstration after being eclipsed by the December 12 Movement which countered with pro-Zimbabwe and President Mugabe marches.
Political analyst Mr Godwin Mureriwa said, “This (destabilisation attempts) is not something new; they have been trying this for years — from the days of Blair, Sarkozy, Bush and these things are well-documented. Their embassies have confirmed that; their leaders have confirmed that.
“It’s not a secret that these countries have imposed sanctions on this country against international laws and their aim was not only to remove President Mugabe but everything that he represents and all the liberation movements in the region.”
Mr Mureriwa also said, “Their strategy has failed and it will continue to fail because Zimbabwe is a democracy. Yes, we have challenges, but governments will never be changed by mobocracy but by elections.
“We all know that President Mugabe has a mandate until 2018 and Zimbabweans know what they voted for. If they want to change, they will do so in 2018 not any date before that.”
