By Own Correspondent|A Senior Zanu Pf official and former Defence and War Veterans minister Tshinga Dube has said that Zimbabwe has now become a pariah state following the shooting and deaths of civilians by state security agents on August 1, 2018, and during last week’s #ShutdownZimbabwe.

Dube, who is a member of Zanu Pf’s highest decision-making body outside of Congress, the Politburo, said that the killings have put Zimbabwe years back when the world was beginning to accept the country and its leadership.

Speaking to a local publication, Dube said:

A lot of things that have happened were not foreseeable. Some very unfortunate things happened which affected us as well as our economy.

Those [killings] put us years back, not months, but many years because the world was beginning to understand us better. I don’t want to say who did it as the problem that we have in this country is that the truth is very sensitive.

With the way things have taken shape, it will take too long to get the situation right. Some countries take this [shootings] very seriously. No-one accepts the blame that someone killed these people, but the truth is that someone killed those people unless it’s not true that those 12 people were killed.

If it’s true that civilians have been killed, then someone did it and it cannot be everybody. I don’t understand why we have such problems in identifying the culprits. Nobody seems to want to identify them, instead, they begin to point fingers at each other.

Twelve people, including a police officer, were reportedly killed during last week’s protests. The government deployed heavily armed soldiers and police who brutally assaulted members of the public. Presidential spokesperson George Charamba warned citizens that the brutality is just a foretaste of things to come.-SouthernEye