The Sunday Mail
The rise in robbery, that is theft using violence or the threat of violence usually by a gang using overwhelming force on a single person or family, is worrisome, as is the even worse return in some circles of ritual murders, where certain people wrongly believe that murdering someone in a particular way is a route to riches.
President Mnangagwa last Thursday referred to both trends at the funeral of retired Major General Godfrey Chanakira and made a decisive call for action by all in law enforcement to deal with this.
Using violence, sometimes extreme violence, to obtain wealth is a sign that there are people who would rather prey on others than get into honest productive work and make their living as valuable members of society, and the Government has been opening up a large range of opportunities to make such productive work possible and even highly remunerative.
Some of the gangsters and killers seem to be able people, or as is almost always the case, men, able to plan, work together co-operatively with like-minded gangsters and carry out their plans. Such skills are needed in the real world of honest business and honest production and it is a personal tragedy, not just to their victims, but also to themselves, when these people turn to violence and crime.
The President gets to the heart of the matter when he notes that the only real way of dealing with such criminals is to deter them, by making it almost certain that they will fairly quickly be in handcuffs, followed by a good few years in jail. The jail being needed to protect the rest of us, as well as showing the criminals that crime does not pay. You cannot spend your stolen money in a cell.
This is why for a long time Zimbabwe had very low rates of violent crime: the odds of getting away with it were minute since the police would rapidly round up the criminals, gather the evidence and the prosecutors and courts would do the rest, proving the wrongdoing and passing the serious sentences required.
Since most criminals, or at least the ones who could successfully mount a robbery or a premeditated murder, are not complete idiots the message got through. As a consequence we rarely had more than one or two gangs of robbers operating, and the graph of robbery statistics reflected this, with a noticeable step up as a new gang started operating and a step down when they were rounded up.
This required some exceptionally talented, skilled and hard-working detective work. CID homicide, which conducted all operations involving violent crime, had first call on the entire CID, and the CID had first call on the whole police force. So the best were chosen.
And the manpower was sufficient for adequate teams to be deployed. A murder investigation might well involve seven detectives working full-time for days or even weeks, that is doing nothing else except hunting down the killer, and backed by laboratories and other resources. They almost always got the killer; we have very few unsolved murders in Zimbabwe and that exceptionally high rate of clearance, plus what amounts to life in jail, at least until you are really old, was deterrent.
But new problems arose. For a start people are keeping large sums in anonymous convertible cash, foreign banknotes, at home or on their person. When robbers had to try and sell a stolen TV with an identity number the game was not worth the candle. A bunch of US$100 notes is different.
In a second problem, the police have noticed that bail seems to be easier to obtain these days, so some of the professional criminals reckon they can get away with it. When caught they obtain bail and skip the country, or lie very low while they spend their money. We even have robbers who seem to live in South Africa, where they even stop at red lights — they are so law abiding, but nip across the river for a quick robbery to refill their cash box and are back in South Africa within hours of the robbery report.
We are seeing a rise in lower level robbery, advanced mugging and the small gangs who use an anonymous car to offer mushikashika lifts and then rob, and at times rape, the passengers.
The police have already put in a special effort to start closing in on these gangs, but almost certainly could use more resources, which must be found, and need backing from the rest of the criminal justice system, the National Prosecuting Authority and the courts.
Prosecutors must be able to establish a prime facie case early in remand proceedings to back up their opposition to bail, which these days has become far too routine even in cases where bail should be granted, and the odd corrupt prosecutor does not help, although the authorities are closing in on them.
While judicial officers, and in robbery and murder cases these must be High Court judges hearing bail applications, need to balance the rights of an accused with the needs of society, they also have to be more conscious of the rising rates of bail jumping. This is where police and prosecutors need to push the envelope to get evidence early, and then speed up the trials. A judge is far more likely to refuse bail if there is decent initial evidence and a guarantee of a speedy trial; at the very least bail can be postponed for a month or two by which time the trial is in progress.
So we need greater activity and more co-operation throughout the system.
Ritual murder is a particularly hideous crime and superstition in society does not help. Some people who know what is going on are frightened to come forward. One curious fact is that the n’anga who has turned to the dark side, the one who gave the details of who to murder and how to murder, is rarely arrested.
A lot of progress could be made if killer and n’anga were co-accused in the same murder trial and spent the rest of their lives together in the same maximum security prison. That might well need police officers who are not superstitious themselves doing the hunting and who are not fussed by threats.
This might help show that murdering a child is not the way to riches and that the whole belief system is not just evil, but ineffective. That can be backed up by traditional leaders and the respectable n’angas making it clear that the murders do not work and that the beliefs are false.
Once again we are back to President Mnangagwa’s directive that he wanted the whole system to be involved. Police, by themselves cannot cope; prosecutors by themselves cannot cope; even magistrates and judges need decent evidence to do their job.
We can beat the violent criminals if police push hard, if prosecutors can obtain the evidence they need for custodial remand and a speedy trial, which someone remanded in custody is entitled to have, and if judicial officers are prepared to refuse bail, at least where adequate suspicion exists and a speedy trial is planned.
Even we the people can help a lot. The police are always anxious for extra information at “any nearest police station”, and we should all assist. Even if we are unsure, we can at least talk and let the trained investigators assess what we know. Between us all we can beat the menace.
