HARARE – The Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) has seized a consignment of books co-authored by Movement for Democratic Change MP Tendai Biti.
The book, ‘Democracy Works’, is set to be launched in Johannesburg on March 27, at an event to be attended by two former presidents – Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.
Biti said 18 copies of the book were dispatched by the publisher in Johannesburg in early January, and the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) “ridiculously asked us to pay duty, and we did.”
The Harare East MP said on Twitter: “Now the President’s Office, a euphemism for the CIO, has abducted these books. Who does that?”
Biti told ZimLive he had been contacted by parcel delivery company, DHL, who informed him that the CIO had taken the books.
“They just said the books had been taken by the President’s Office. It’s outrageous,” he said.
Democracy Works was co-authored by Biti, Obasanjo, Greg Mills of the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation and Jeffrey Herbst, the president of the American Jewish University. Sirleaf wrote the foreword.
Published by Pan Macmillan, the authors explore how we can learn to nurture and deepen democracy in Africa to ensure economic growth and political stability. They argue that making democracy work relies on much more than having free and fair elections, but depends on what happens between elections – systems and institutions of government as well as what politicians want to do with the power they acquire, beyond the power itself.
