IS IT RIGHT TO BEAT CIVIL SERVANTS?

It is finished....”, cried our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ in the Book of John 19:30, as He bowed His head and gave up His Spirit on the Cross, in triumph over death, during His excruciatung ordeal in Calvary.

The above verse, in a way, sums up the irrevocably finished, destroyed, tattered, and irreversible damage done to whatever remnants of unity that supercially existed before between our (or is it, their?) government - represented by her brutal, State security agency - the police - and the public, represented by Public Sector Associations (PSAs).

Confrontation

This is after last Wednesday’s bloody and violent confrontation during the strike action, aptly coined #Operation ‘shut down’ in Manzini between striking civil servants and the police. Shutting down Manzini would be the understatement of the year.... they brought it to a standstill! For those of us with a long memory, exactly like that of the law, we vividly recall that an almost exact replica of this recent bloody confrontation, happened a year or so ago, coincidentally, in the same city, when the brutal, no-nonsense,  paramilitary wing of the police - like a pack of hungry, hyenas - chased after protesting workers affiliated to the umbrella federation, TUCOSWA, beating them to a pulp.

The media, just as it has done this time around, published spine chilling, bloody graphics of maimed protesters. To sensitive readers, the horrific pictures, exactly like the recent ones, will remain indelible in their memories for years to come. In the aftermath of and a few hours after the violent incident, as I carefully made my way to work, past a relaxing, but imposing in their riot gear a group of police officers, after I guess, a mission accomplished, I overheard one of them saying some thing to the effect that even ‘though we might have relatives among the injured, these protesters forget that we have a mandate...’

I mused worryingly to myself at this remark as I walked away, thinking to myself: could their mandate have been to beat senseless, and to a bloody pulp, unarmed protesters? imagination
Like the good, old and objective ‘mfucuta’ that I am, I cannot exonerate the protesters from blame.

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