| A Consolidated Report on the Food Riots 19 - 23 January, 1998 |
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Contents « Prev Next »3. The Food Riots — Analysis of Newspaper and Other Reports This section deals with the reports made of the Food Riots at the time. It was compiled from newspapers, magazines and other reports. The pattern of events is described below in the table, showing the outbreak of rioting reported in the press day-by-day over the week. The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) have issued their own comment on the Food Riots, published in the June edition of Outpost.25 As a response to the calls by civil society for an in-depth investigation into the Food Riots, the ZRP report is brief in the extreme and considerably less than satisfactory. In the background section of this report, the rises in the prices of food commodities is given pre-eminence, exacerbated, in the view of the ZRP, by consumer activists and "misguided elements". The report does admit, however, that "... there was no formal announcement from any organisation that there would be any demonstration". Table 1.
Overview The need for accurate documentation is given added impetus by the ZRP report. 26 The ZRP report attempts to provide an overview of the events, and conforms to the general picture given by the press, but is very unhelpful in its brevity, quite apart from making some assertions that definitely require support. For example, the report claims that businesses were threatened by gangs without stating any justification for this view, and, furthermore, claims that other business received threatening faxes from "pressure groups": the nature of these pressure groups is unspecified and needs to be if the ZRP report is to have any real value. Most disappointingly, the ZRP makes no reference to deaths or injuries, which clearly are of extreme concern to all.The report also makes reference to the deployment of the army, "as provided by the Defence Act", which says very little about who or how this decision was made. It is of paramount importance to understand the decision-making behind the deployment of the army, and civil society would wish to know whether this decision was made by the Minister of Defence, the President, the Vice-Presidents or whoever. Finally, the section on the police reaction is wholly unsatisfactory. The report asserts that the situation was brought under control "through extensive use of minimum force", which is clearly at variance with all other reports. The lack of reference to deaths and injuries is unsatisfactory to say the least. The reference to the number of arrests and the value of property recovered is also interesting. The ZRP report claims that property to the value of Z$4 billion was recovered, which needs to be matched with insurance claims and estimates of damages generally.
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