CHAPTER 4 4.0. INTERVENTION BY THE ZIMBABWE REPUBLIC POLICE AND SUBSEQUENT INVOLVEMENT OF THE MILITARY 4.1. Intervention by the Police The Commission heard the following evidence from the Police: a. The pre-election period was peaceful but the utterances by MDC Alliance leaders at various campaign rallies and press statements to the effect that they would not accept any election result which was not in their favour made the likelihood of post-election violence possible. b. The Police had gathered intelligence that supporters of the MDC Alliance took the utterances by their leaders seriously and intended to demonstrate in the event that their presidential candidate lost the elections. The Police therefore made arrangements for police personnel to be available in the event of protests breaking out in Harare. c. Election duties, however, required most police officers to be deployed at various polling stations throughout the country. The Police therefore had a depleted force in Harare. It is this depleted force that ended up being deployed to maintain public order in Harare. d. At or about 0900 hours, on the 1st August 2018, the Officer Commanding Harare District, Chief Superintendent Albert Ncube deployed 167 Police officers at perceived ‘hot spots’. These included HICC (ZEC national elections command centre), Harvest House (MDC Alliance Headquarters), 24 24