The United Nations Security Council must ensure that Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa is brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and stand trial for the ‘heinous’ crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the military who ‘twice callously murdered innocent Zimbabweans in a space of five months under his watch’, the opposition MDC Alliance has said.
In a statement, the party’s deputy national spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka said the UN has let Zimbabweans down by failing to drag Mnangagwa to court, adding that the septuagenarian has, to-date, failed to honour the recommendations of the Kgalema Mothlante-led Commission of Inquiry into the post-electoral violence which rocked central Harare resulting in the cold-blooded killings of six civilians while the seventh victim succumbed to the skirmishes.
“He (Mnangagwa) has dismally failed to compensate aggrieved families of the state-instigated murders in line with the recommendations of an international investigation committee that he commissioned himsel”, said Tamborinyoka.
“The (Mothlante) Commission found the police and the army liable for the murders, which makes Mnangagwa personally culpable because he is commander-in-chief of the military, whose rogue elements needlessly snuffed out the lives of the six innocent Zimbabweans.

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa

The United Nations Security Council has let Zimbabweans down by failing to drag Mnangagwa before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity”, he said.
Tamborinyoka, who is also the presidential spokesperson for youthful party leader Nelson Chamisa, said although Zimbabwe is not a signatory to the Rome Statute of the ICC, there is a precedent of the world body not folding its hands when non-State parties have grossly abused human rights.
“The UN Security Council intervened in Sudan in 2005 and in Libya in 2011 when the respective countries’ leaders were fingered in crimes against humanity. Notwithstanding the excesses of the big powers in Libya in 2011, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) remains a noble principle that should send a clear and unequivocal message to killer governments such as the Mnangagwa regime”, wrote Tamborinyoka.
When he came to power at the back of a military coup in November 2017, Mnangagwa promised to divorce his style of leadership from that of his late predecessor and deposed autocrat Robert Mugabe. The professed divorce in style of leadership has, however, been hardly visible as the New Dispensation has the infamy of heavily descending on public dissent.

Zwnews