Tendai Ruben Mbofana
In recent days, the Zimbabwean government has signaled its intent to invoke terrorism and banditry laws to clamp down on planned public protests.
According to the law, any person who commits an act—accompanied by the use or threatened use of weaponry—for the purpose of causing insurrection, resisting the government by force, or altering laws through coercion, and which results in death, injury, property destruction, financial loss, obstruction of movement, or disruption of essential services, shall be deemed guilty of terrorism.
While no rational person condones violence of any form—especially in expressing political discontent or demanding the resignation of a sitting president—it is equally counterproductive, even dangerous, for the government to weaponize such laws to crush peaceful dissent.
This law, as widely shared by the Ministry of Information Permanent Secretary, Nick Mangwana, reads like an ominous threat to citizens who dare challenge a system that has, for decades, produced untold hardship.
But what is more unsettling is the irony that those in authority—who claim to be protecting the country from terrorism—have themselves inflicted the most catastrophic form of economic and social sabotage on the very people they purport to defend.
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It is not unarmed citizens marching in protest who have killed hopes, destroyed livelihoods, and obstructed the movement of goods, people, and opportunity.
It is the ruling elite who, through rampant corruption and mismanagement, have terrorized Zimbabweans for decades in a manner more insidious and enduring than any street protest ever could.
Take, for instance, the clause that defines terrorism as any act that results in death or injury.
While the government might narrowly interpret this as physical violence during unrest, how do we categorize the deaths of thousands of Zimbabweans due to a collapsed healthcare system—robbed of funding by looters in high offices?
When billions meant for public hospitals vanish through inflated procurement deals and ghost tenders, and when hospitals operate without essential drugs, ambulances, or qualified staff, does this not result in real, measurable death and injury?
Is this not terrorism—perpetrated not with guns or bombs, but with pens and power?
Consider also the clause referring to acts that result in the destruction or damage of property.
Zimbabweans have watched their properties—their homes, businesses, and farms—wither into ruins, not because of riots or bombs, but because of economic sabotage from the top.
What is it if not sabotage when corrupt officials plunder resources meant for infrastructure development, leaving roads impassable, power plants dysfunctional, and urban water systems broken?
In the past few months alone, 18-hour power cuts have plunged industries and homes into darkness.
Businesses are shutting down, workers are losing their jobs, and breadwinners are becoming beggars—not due to violent protests, but because of chronic looting and gross incompetence.
If burning a single bus qualifies as terrorism, what then is the systemic collapse of entire cities and public utilities caused by corruption?
The law also criminalizes acts that inflict substantial financial loss on any person.
How then does the government justify the plunder of national wealth that has rendered pensions worthless, savings inaccessible, and salaries virtually useless?
Zimbabweans who once worked hard, saving every cent, are now destitute because the economy has been looted into oblivion.
The reintroduction of the local currency by the President Emmerson Mnangagwa administration 2019, which wiped out people’s life earnings, did not result from banditry in the streets but from the fiscal banditry of those in charge.
Similarly, when national tenders are awarded to shell companies owned by political cronies—overcharging the government by millions while delivering nothing—what is the cumulative financial loss to every ordinary citizen?
Isn’t this the greatest form of economic terrorism?
Furthermore, the law criminalizes acts that obstruct or endanger free movement.
Yet, what is the economic suffocation Zimbabweans experience every day if not a form of obstruction?
When youth cannot find jobs, when students cannot afford fees, when breadwinners must cross borders illegally to feed their families—because the local economy has been looted dry—what mobility is left to speak of?
The government’s failure to create viable economic conditions has erected invisible but impregnable barricades in the lives of millions.
The child in Lupane who walks ten kilometers to school, the mother in Mbare who queues all day for water, the farmer in Chivi who cannot move his maize because he cannot afford transport costs—these are victims of national obstruction, not by protesters but by the state.
The law also mentions disruption of essential services as a form of terrorism.
There is no greater disruption to essential services than what the people of Zimbabwe endure daily.
Hospitals are dysfunctional, schools underfunded, civil servants underpaid, and local councils deliberately sabotaged to justify centralization of power.
Even justice is no longer an essential service for the common man.
While citizens are imprisoned without trial for minor offenses, politically-connected individuals walk free after embezzling millions.
What service is more essential than justice—and what disruption more damaging than its weaponization?
If these legal clauses are to be taken seriously, then those who should be prosecuted for terrorism are not the hungry, frustrated citizens seeking to voice their pain through protest, but those who have systematically bled the nation dry from the top.
This includes officials who misuse public funds, those who loot diamond revenues, those who sabotage procurement systems, and those who steal from humanitarian aid.
These are the real terrorists whose actions meet every criterion laid out in the law.
It is not only unpatriotic, but deeply immoral to label peaceful dissent as terrorism while ignoring the far greater terror inflicted by unchecked corruption and authoritarian repression.
When a government that has presided over decades of economic ruin lectures the citizenry about law and order, it is not seeking justice—it is trying to maintain control through fear.
The real banditry is not in the streets, it is in the boardrooms of state enterprises, in the corridors of ministries, and in the secret accounts of politically protected oligarchs.
True patriotism means holding those in power accountable.
It means speaking truth to power, even when doing so risks retribution.
It means asking why, in a land so rich in minerals, land, and human talent, over 80 percent of the population lives in abject poverty.
It means refusing to be silenced by threats of prosecution under laws that conveniently ignore the more devastating crimes committed by those enforcing them.
If the government truly wants to combat terrorism and banditry, it should begin by turning the lens inward.
It should investigate how billions have been lost to cartels.
It should prosecute those responsible for underdevelopment and poverty.
And it should realize that silencing the victims of economic terror does not bring peace—it only deepens their pain.
Post published in: Featured