A proposed new law criminalising the identification of rogue state agents committing rights abuses must be “defied with contempt”, former minister Jonathan Moyo has said.
Godfrey Gandawa, the former deputy minister of higher and tertiary education, said identifying rogue agents who commit crimes against civilians was a “civic duty.”
Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi last weekend announced that ministers had decided against a so-called Patriot Bill which would also prohibit Zimbabweans from “speaking with indecent haste against their own country on issues of foreign relations.”
Instead, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime now intends to incorporate the provisions through an amendment of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.
“In the process of reviewing the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, it has been further identified that the current provisions do not cater for the protection from publication of the identity of members the security services, including informants and sources,” according to a cabinet memorandum cited by the Sunday Mail.
“Furthermore, it is proposed that Section 30 be amended to include the act of publication of the identity of members of the security services, including that of informants and sources as an offence of causing disaffection of officials.”
The proposed law change comes after Moyo, who lives in exile in Kenya, in August named nearly a dozen Central Intelligence Organisation agents he said were involved in the abduction and torture of 22-year-old journalism student Tawanda Muchehiwa, the nephew of ZimLive editor Mduduzi Mathuthu.
Muchehiwa was tortured for three days and then dumped barely clinging to life, his kidneys almost shutting down.
The former information minister identified several agents and linked them to a notorious unit known as the Ferret Team, Ferret Squad or simply Ferrets, which is accused of abducting and torturing opposition activists with impunity.
