Riot police have arrested the Harare deputy sheriff trying to open the Anglican cathedral for a Sunday service, the cathedral church warden Sekai Chibaya said Monday.
The cathedral had been illegally occupied by a renegade pro-ruling party ex-priest and baton-charged parishioners waiting for the church to be opened and to begin a service, witnesses said.
Watched by a group of about 20 parishioners on Sunday, a locksmith accompanying the deputy-sheriff – whose name was not immediately available – had just used a bolt cutter to open the padlock on the gate to the cathedral when a squad of riot police drove up, Chibaya said.
That is truly horrifying.
It is a prerequisite for all top appointments in the police, armed forces and increasingly, the judiciary, that the appointee be a member of the ruling party, which is called ZANU-PF. The chief of police is called Augustine Chihuri and his police openly defy the few independently minded judges. Ponder his first name. Many of the most culpable members of the regime have strongly Christian names, indicating either Roman Catholic or High Church Anglican backgrounds, both churches being prominent in founding missions a century ago and still running many of the schools. Consider, for example, the names of Didymus Mutasa, the dreaded Minister of National Security, who once said coldly, when people were starving, that Zimbabwe could do with a smaller population. Or Patrick Chinamasa, the Minister of Justice. Or Ambrose Mutihiri, Minister of Youth, or Boniface Chidyausiku, representative at the UN. Old-fashioned Christian and Catholic names, alas. And all of them with such terrible misdeeds to their names that they are banned from the US and the EU.