The implications of this party/state conflation and its impact on our safety and security policies can be summarized as follows: • Party interests are more important than national interests; • Party loyalty is more important than competence in state institutions; • Which undermines national perspective and interests and marginalizes minorities; • Leaving no space for national dialogue and critical reflection; • Undermining meaningful oversight (role of parliament is weakened); • Leading to failure to build a national service ethos and effective institutions; • Which has encouraged patronage and resulted in massive corruption; • And prevented state security institutions from fulfilling their mandated constitutional roles or delivering effective citizen-focused security services. Finally in this regard we need to consider the implications of the military intervention of November 2017 - the not-a-coup-coup - essentially to address innerparty conflict in the ruling party. There are certainly contested interpretations over the constitutional and political content of these events. These have been widely canvassed in Zimbabwe and indeed in the international community. I do not intend to repeat these polemics here, but simply to put the question: what are the implications for Zimbabwe of such an intervention? The events of November 2017 suggest that the party/state conflation in Zimbabwe includes the security sector to such a degree that internal party contestation requires military intervention and that such intervention is legitimate. Indeed the High Court has made such a declaration, and parliament itself in its attempt to impeach a sitting state president on the basis of the military intervention did much the same, which only raises more worrying questions concerning the implications of these events. Security sector policy and governance in Zimbabwe today With regard to security sector policy - and doctrine - it is obvious that we still retain many of the vestiges of colonial policy today, as illustrated by my earlier example of border management. The same could be said of our failure to resolve the contradictions between customary law (and the role of traditional leaders) and the western legal system we inherited from colonialism with its white-wigged judges and judicial focus on retribution rather than restitution. Have we established a genuine and indigenous system of justice, which is available to the ordinary and often poor citizen on the basis of equality and universal access to justice? Or do we still have special privileges and impunity for a minority whilst the majority must answer to the laws of the land? What of policing and the freedom demands made by the earlier generation of freedom fighters? Have we actually established those freedoms that the pioneers of the struggle yearned and struggled for? Do our police today treat dissenters and 15