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General Francisco Pereira Furtao goes to Zim.
Getting ready for the killing fieldsHow Angola's experts will train our police and military in the art of shooting straight...at us! Here's a name that should be giving some of us a few sleepless nights - General Francisco Pereira Furtado. The General is Chief of Staff to the Angolan Armed Forces, but he's not in Angola at this time, he's right here in Zimbabwe, and believe me that is bad news. General Furtado flew in last week, and has been making a tour of our defence establishments. He is, he says frequently, looking for areas where Angolan expertise can "enhance the performance" of Zimbabwe's military and police personnel. "Enhance the performance"? That's just military double-talk. What it means is, teaching our guys to use their guns. Soon - possibly in the next few weeks - instructors from Angola's feared police "ninjas", a nickname earned by their all-black uniforms and their savagery, will be arriving in Zimbabwe, while selected Zimbabwe police and army members will pass them going the other way, to Angola. Concentrated training will ensue. The result, the Mugabe government hope, will be that when the next election looms, and when opposition activists and supporters take to the streets, the average Zimbabwean army ranker or constable will shoot the demonstrator he aims at, and not the one next to him, or one of his own colleagues, or one of his own feet. I revealed the need felt by the Mugabe government to train its forces in the use of weapons back in March, in the First Post. Police Commissioner August Chihuri said then, in a leaked memo, that his junior officers needed "practical skills". He meant they were bad at killing people. At the time the plan was to import some 3,000 ninjas from Angola to help out in a really hands-on way. They would kill people for us. But this was abandoned when someone remembered that such a scheme would cost foreign exchange, which we don't have. So in its place comes this intensive Angolan training programme, which will involve almost every Zimbabwean who wears a uniform - police, prisons officers, army and airforce - and soon all of them will be skilled in the gentle art of shooting their fellow countrymen and women. Don't forget to duck. Posted by: Besoeker 2007-08-26 |
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