Threatened by the pro-democracy activists who are mobilising citizens around the national flag, President Robert Mugabe’s government is hurriedly working on a law that would make it illegal for individual citizens to own or be found in possession of the country’s flag. Government sources said that the law, which would come into effect as soon as August this year, would allow only institutions—both public and private to own a flag, but not private individuals. This would apply to all flags regardless of size and material it is made from.
“Once the ban comes into effect, all citizens would be given a deadline by which they should surrender all flags after which it would become a serious offence for anyone to be found in possession of the national flag,” an official in the ministry of Justice, where the draft law is been worked, said.
“This would include having flags on or in cars as well as those that citizens have, of late, been using to drape themselves,” the source said, adding that offenders would be jailed for up to three years.
The move has certainly been necessitated by Pastor Evan Mawarire and his ThisFlag movement who have teamed up with another movement, Tajamuka, to mobilise people against President Mugabe’s rule.
Meanwhile, ZANU-PF has already started banning its members from using the social media as it tries ‘its best to keep its followers in the dark’.
