Paying the political price for humiliating Zanu PF in the March elections Deputy Minister Thamsanga Mahlangu is dlanguishing in detention over alegations of stealing a mobile phone valued at less than US$35.00 simply because it belongs to Zanu PF's Comander of Farm invasions Joseph ChinotimbaSelf confessed Zanu PF Attorney General Johannes Tomana must be relishing every moment in his office if the flexing of muscle he has shown and continues to show the MDC-T is anything to go by.
Whatever he is getting as reward for his hostility towards anything MDC-T must be monumental otherwise he would by now have put brakes on the disingenuous onslaught against MDC-T members.
After all he is the first one to claim right to freedom of association and political affiliation to his beloved Zanu PF party that his onslaught against MDC-T members seems to suggest does not extent to association and affiliation with any other party than Zanu PF for all Zimbabweans who cherish their liberty from arbitrary incarceration
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In 2004 my then trendy Nokia 3310 was stolen by a Worker at the casino in the Harare show grounds.
I realised the deprivation immediately and sent word to management and casino security and some friends who used their phones to try and track the phone as there was no chance it had been taken out by the thief in the short space of time that had elapsed between my last use of the phone and its disappearance.
Each time we phoned the phone rang once and was cut off indicating it was within the premises of the casino and the thief was not conversant with how it was turned on and off otherwise he/she would have long switched the device off to avoid detection.
Be that as it may I drove home feeling really down and deprived from the loss of my handy gadget.
Like Chinotimba this phone was my office and deprivation caused me a lot of business hardships and losses as a sole proprietor who was still setting up my venture and trying hard to impress the few customers who had entrusted me with their business. The following morning I was the first guest at the nearby Police Station to report my lost phone equipped with the Pay as you go certificate and all the documentation I had for the phone and line.
The helpful officer assigned the case advised me to go to my network operator and report the theft and tipped me that since the phone was on a pay as you go platform
I should specifically request that the line be left operational even though it was in my control.
I was really hurt because I had substantially topped up the airtime for the phone and knew that if the line was left open the thief would use-up the credit somehow or would just dispose of the sim card and the credit.
After some counselling and reassurances from the officer that it was in my best interest to lose the credit in order to recover the trendy and expensive handset that the 3310 was then, I decided to cooperate.
After signing an indemnity form against the operator the line was left operational and somehow the thief discovered he was sitting on thousands worth of credit in the phone he could use to phone whoever he wanted.
Numerous calls were made from the stolen phone to a landline somewhere in Glen Norah by the unsuspecting thief unaware that calls on that line were under surveillance.
After two weeks the Investigating Officer requested me to go and request for a printout of the account related to the line and suing the fixed line numbers we managed to establish their owners and locations.
I phoned each and every mobile number that had been contacted by the thief in the two weeks he had the liberty of using my phone without my express or implied consent and number pretending that I had missed calls from them on the stolen number that I was returning and asking for their names and whereabouts as well as the purpose they had called me.
Some were hostile while others were cooperative. A breakthrough was made when one of the numbers was answered by a teenager who disclosed that the number I had given him was similar to the one his uncle was using to phone the lady in Glen Norah a few moments before.
I rushed to the police station with the breaking news but the investigating officer told me to chill. He had no transport to take us to Glen Norah neither did he believe the lead was the breakthrough we needed because the calls were concentrated in the Glen Norah area.
I offered to drive him but he said he was not insured should anything untoward happen while in my car.
I was so disappointed I left the Police station in a huff with mutterings to the effect that the officer had somehow been bribed out of the investigation and I was not wrong.
The following day I returned to see the Officer Commanding and requested that i be assigned a different Investigating Officer to accompany me to the lead’s home to track down the thief.
Fortunately the OC knew me well from my association with the neighbourhood watch which had helped them crack several cases of housebreaking and theft in the area and he dutifully obliged.
We drove in my car to Glen Norah and the youngster gave us the address his uncle had phoned and his usual place of residence.
We visited the place and a few questions emerged the name of the thief and his girlfriend as well as the fact that they had just left the place for a fling at the aunt’s residence nearby.
We followed the lead and minutes later we were face to face with the thief’s hostile aunt. It was difficult to break her down as she made every possible attempt to conceal the whereabouts of her thieving son.
My escorting officer then threw all caution to the wind and read the thief’s aunt her rigts and produced his police identity card and asked her to join us in the drive to the police station.
She obliged and it was while on the way that she realised the gravity of the matter and decided to spill the beans but by then the thief had made good his escape.
We however established he had a rendezvous with a potential buyer for the phone at the casino that evening and we decided to set a trap.
I went to the Casino together with the officer and as he arrived- he was unmistakeable from the description we had obtained from his aunt and the help of other casino workers we had interviewed in advance so I approached him as the potential buyer’s emissary.
He was suspicious but I was too convincing and had the cash right there and then. Bingo he produced the phone and as he counted the money my Police escort came on the scene and announced we were both under arrest for dealing in stolen mobile phones.
I faked a good escape and he did likewise in the other direction but was pursued by the officer and apprehended .I returned to the scene and reclaimed my money back from the handcuffed thief and the story was narrated to him that i was infact the owner of the phone he was trying to sell.
At the Police station the thief admitted theft and was fined cautioned and released without even being taken to court. He was not even ordered to reimburse me the credit he had used up nor was i allowed to claim the restitution for deprivation of my lovely Phone.
Now Deputy Minister Thamsanga Mhlangu has been in custody for the entire week over allegations of stealing Joseph Chinotimba’s not so trendy Nokia 2610 and there are claims he has been tracked down through the similar system I used to recover my stolen Nokia 3310 and line way back in 2004.
There are many similarities between the allegations levelled against the deputy Minister and those I personally witnessed when my phone was stolen.
The immediate discovery of deprivation, the appeal for return of the phone, the tracking and the arrest through girlfriends are all similar as well as the admission of possession except that the deputy Minister denies theft and alleges he got the phone from someone else and had no idea who the owner was and did not intent to deprive the owner as he has already handed the phone to Minister Kasukuwere.
The irony of the matter is on how the two cases are now being treated at judicial resolution level.
Whereas the thief who stole my phone never stepped a foot in the police cells and was given the option to pay a police fine despite admitting theft and his intention to permanently deprive me of my phone, deputy minister Mhlangu has been locked up for the entire week and when eventually he was granted bail on his appearance in court the AG has invoked the notorious section 121 of the Criminal evidence and procedures act to deny him freedom by at least another 7 working days while an appeal against the granting of bail is being crafted.
There is no doubt in my mind the AG’s appeal will be filed just before the close of business on Wednesday 5 July 2009 to ensure the deputy minister is detained for the longest possible period permitted by the law.
Meanwhile Masvingo Zanu PF political commissar facing serious allegations of swindling thousands of dollars of Chiredzi sugar cane farmers payments was released from police cells within 48 hours of incarceration and without the AG opposing his release through section 121 of the CEPA.
At least 14 of the MDC-T’s 150legislators are burdened with one or another legal
accusation demanding court appearance or which has resulted in some conviction and sentence by the lower courts.
Of the 14 one has been exonerated of all charges .
Zanu PF only has 4 of its 145 Legislators and a bevy of corrupt bureaucrats under probe. These are the shocking realities of judicial practice in our country.
Why legislators from one single political party are so criminally inclined baffles the mind when the same party has thousands of maimed, abused and or illegally deprived complainants whose abusers are known but never questioned to establish veracity of the party’s claims of victimisation.
And why would one cell phone thief be let off with a paltry Police fine and another be detained , sent to court and have to fight an appeal to be admitted to bail if other than that the law enforcers have a hidden agenda against the later thief.
This is not to say that high ranking thieves must not be prosecuted but merely to seek deeper insight into whether the arrest of MDC-T Mps and their incarceration at the behest of an AG who openly declares allegiance to a competing political party is not politically motivated as opposed to being judicially premised.
Tomana and his team of prosecutors are persecuting Zanu PF opponents and or political competitors and the offences for which so much scarce financial resources are being waste do not add value to jurisprudence in the country neither do they assist in healing the bleeding nation.
They must be stopped forthwith or at the very least they must be dealt with discretionary by the arresting details.
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