Yesterday we shared with our subscribers the news about 39 of the 45 treason charge detainees being released. However, as we noted, Munyaradzi Gwisai of the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) and 5 others remain in custody.

Here are some of the responses we received:

• This is wonderful news!
• Great news! We wait for the 6. Keep up the spirit, keep up the fight!
• Thanks be to God. We pray for the remaining 6 to be granted freedom.
• Let’s keep on praying for the remaining ones.
• God is great.
• Time is on our side, we must be patient.
• We will win.
• The Almighty God’s power will deliver them.
• Acts 12 v 5-11 – I mean the same God who did it then will surely even today. Heb 13 v 8.
• Surely one day all of us will be free from bondage.
• The Almighty is a loving and caring Father who is going to lead us out of bondage like he did the Israelites out of Egypt!
• Thank you. Peace to the remaining 6.
• We pray for peace and a good government. Can the Almighty God bless all and release poverty and hunger for many of us to remember his Greatness. Amen.
• God is for us.
• Thank God.
• This is ridiculous. It’s meant to frustrate any meaningful activism here. Kuvhunduka chati kwacha.
• God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. He is doing it for the second time. The third time will be for all who are living in bondage myself included.
• They’ll detain even millions. Know your environment and characters. Action!
• Not fair they must all be relased. God is watching.
• No to treason. If that is the case we are not yet independent. No freedom. So we will go for it. What I know is God is watching. We are praying for their release.
• Certainly they’ll win their case because a remote control isn’t a weapon to threaten the security of the nation let alone the government. It’s a mockery of our justice system. Viva Munya.
• That’s very bad. How is the police force operating just detaining people for the sake of pleasing Zanu PF. Bad recipe.
• Gwisai demonstrated, so has Mugabe. Free him.
• We are with you guys. They cannot kill your spirit. Gwisai, the revolutionary fire in you can never be quenched by any force, whehter natural or supernatural. All African dictators must go this year!
• Shame to the spin doctor, he represents everything bad & evil in this country. To the 45 hang in there we’re with you in our prayers.
• Thank God let’s hope the remaining 6 will be released too.
• That’s better now. We hope and pray that the remaining will be released soon. Let justice prevail.
• Thanks the Almighty and your update.
• Fear of the people is driving them crazy and most dangerous. The masses keep quiet at their own peril. Todaay it’s Gwisai tomorrow it’s you & me!

I am thrilled to report the release of our colleague Lenard Kamwendo and 38 other detainees who had been facing treason charges in the case of the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe)’s Munyaradzi Gwisai and 44 others. In the Magistrate’s court in Harare today, Magistrate Mutevedzi held that there was no reasonable suspicion against 39 of the detainees, and they have been released.

But Gwisai, Hopewell Gumbo of ZIMCODD and 4 others are still being held in custody. They will not appear in court again until 21 March – over a month since they were arrested for holding a meeting in which they discussed recent events in Tunisia and Egypt. They also deserve to be going home today. Free the 6 now.

In principle, I don’t have a problem with the idea of an anti-sanctions rally. Anyone who still clings to the myth of them being targeted or a grand illusion orchestrated by our Dear Leader, needs to face reality: sanctions are real, they are not targeted, and they are wrong.

As with most things, ZANU PF took the recent anti-sanctions rally much too far. Now what would have been a rallying point for all Zimbabweans, has been reduced to little more than an exercise in futility and the beginning of ZANU PFs campaign for debatable elections. By no stretch of the imagination can anyone claim that it was a legitimate expression of the peoples’ wishes. For one thing, the people were told to go. A friend called me in distress, after the technicians at a printing concern near downtown Harare were ordered (after an ID check) to attend the rally, and his indigenously owned and operated business lost time, money and customers.

Happily, there are reports the police walked out of the rally during the President’s speech, leaving members of the public with better things to do to do the same.

Forced attendance is nothing compared to the relentless assault on the intelligence of ordinary Zimbabweans. The injury is made worse when you recall that it is the same regime that in the early 80′s instituted a policy of education for all, punctuating the savanna with numerous schools and teachers’ colleges. Or that during Gore reNzara, the same regime bragged to anyone who would listen that even ana ambuya vekumusha understood economic concepts like the drivers of hyperinflation. Yet yesterday they saw fit to treat the assembled masses like drooling five year olds.  Zimbabwe supposedly has some of the most educated members of government in the world, and these same people chose to publicly offer moronic platitudes like comparing Our Dear Leader to Cremora – a bland white powder, or saying

“There is no president the world over who has degrees like President Mugabe. He is brainy and that’s why he is feared.”

I quite doubt that anyone could be in fear of an 87 year old man who didn’t command a vast army, no matter how ‘brainy’ he was.

Do they think we’re stupid? Yes.

While Our Dear Leader and his cohorts make an embarrassing spectacle of lamenting sanctions, they forget and distract us from realising that we are slowly becoming South Africa and China’s client state. Zimbabwe manufactures very little. Redistributing what pittance is left of foreign owned companies would not change that. It will not change China’s increasing ownership of the ‘people’s resources’ neither will it stop the influx of South African goods onto supermarket shelves.

It’s days like this that make me wish I could believe in something. Instead, my every eyelash and rainbow and first star wish, my deepest hope and greatest intention have all been going for the same thing for the past 17 days. I need this to be the day the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe)’s Munyaradzi Gwisai, ZIMCODD’s Hopewell Gumbo, our colleague Lenard Kamwendo and the 42 others who have been charged with treason go home.

Tonight will be the 12th night in custody for Munyaradzi Gwisai of the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) and the 44 others who have been charged with treason.

I’ve just watched the most gorgeous sunset. Free the 45 now. They deserve to get to watch the sunset too.

An article from The Week:

It was 1941; they should have been preparing for the invasion of the Soviet Union, but instead Nazi officials in Berlin were preoccupied by news that a businessman in Finland has trained his dog to give a mocking Nazi salute in response to the word”Hitler”. Indeed, officials were so outraged by this perceived act of defiance that, according to records newly unearthed in Berlin, German diplomats in Finland – an ally of Nazi Germany – were told to gather evidence for a prosecution.”This is a funny story, but it is a Nazi story which tells how they were looking for enemies everywhere,” said historian Klaus Hillenbrand.