Concerns have been expressed that donated helicopters could be used to bolster Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's regime.
The Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) has met police commissioner General Augustine Chihuri and the prisons commissioner general, retired Major General Paradzai Zimondi, to impress on them the need to respect human rights in the forthcoming polls and to accept the outcome.
The commission's chairperson, Jacob Mudenda, last week told a workshop on human rights in the mining sector that the commission had met the two men and that a meeting was on the cards with army General Constantine Chiwenga and other generals.
The Zimbabwe Environment Law Association moderated the workshop. "The police, we met them – the very top brass within the ZRP [Zimbabwe Republic Police] and [discussed] what we think about promotion of human rights. We have met Zimondi. We will be meeting Chiwenga, but we will not rush to say this is what we have done with Chiwenga. We want constructive engagement not publicity," Mudenda said.
Chihuri has said openly he supports Zanu-PF and has called the Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, a "lunatic". Zimondi has been quoted in the media as saying he would take up arms should the MDC win.
The warning comes after many reports of the army and police chiefs saying that they would not salute or respect a poll outcome favourable to MDC or Tsvangirai. Also, in the past election, the MDC implicated the police and army in orchestrating politically motivated violence against it. President Robert Mugabe last year conceded at an anti-violence meeting that there were times when the police had not acted for the people.
The commission was a requirement of the unity government. Mudenda said the commission, which will be observing polls for the first time, was battling to secure funding to assess the state of human rights comprehensively.
Mudenda, a lawyer, said that, when the Act that set up the commission was brought before Parliament, there was no discussion about how the body would be funded – it was rushed through based on a Cabinet agreement. He said the commission had been able to sustain its operations because of a €500 000 donation by the Danish Institute for Human Rights.