The car screeched in behind me. I walked into the coffee shop. I had a coffee, peeked out, and the car was still there. I ordered more coffee and sipped it slowly. It was still there.
I dawdled on and on. It was getting late. The coffee shop was about to close. I decided to go to a supermarket, and trawl among the almost empty shelves. Then maybe I could go somewhere for dinner. But where next, if he was still following me?
My tail, however, had a short attention span. He was gone by the time I left the coffee shop.
The CIO has always been one of the best-funded agencies. Regular police might struggle to find fuel for cars or charge sheets or typewriters that work, but the CIO has computers and reliable transportation.
"If you compare it with other ministries, you might say that the organization is well resourced. But if you compare 2000 and 2008, you will see that they [resources] are depleted," the officer says.
"You start having situations where you are fighting for resources. We are looking at a situation where you are supposed to do A, B and C in a specific time. But where there are no resources, you can't do A, B and C. What happens is compromised or half-baked information management. You end up coming up with a more crude than refined process."
He sees the violence unleashed during the recent elections as primitive, crude and counterproductive. The so-called securocrats, he says, "are not so intellectually gifted; they're shortsighted."
"It's not easy to align yourself with a diabolical or cruel way of doing things."
When he joined the CIO, he was hoping for a speedy political trajectory in the ruling ZANU-PF party -- and by that measure he has been successful. But he's come to despise the deadening political conformity and stifling of criticism in the party.
To him that's the systemic flaw that is killing Zimbabwe: the crushing of ideas.
"What has always happened -- which I think is the weakness in the system -- is that when a decision is taken, wrongly or rightly, you will have to end up conforming if you want to remain part of the group."
So in public, he remains part of the system. But not in his heart.
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robyn.dixon@latimes.com
