HARARE – The MDC Alliance on Thursday poo-pooed the interim findings of a government investigation into the abduction, torture and sexual assault of three female party activists, saying it was not credible.
Home Affairs Minister Kazembe Kazembe on Thursday read out an eight-page “update” on “progress made so far” by a government-ordered multi-agency inquiry into the May 13 incident, concluding that the women – who include Harare West MP Joana Mamombe – had lied about their abduction and torture.
The MDC Alliance said Kazembe’s statement was an “unfortunate and desperate attempt by the authorities to stage a cover-up and save face following the state’s well documented history of enforced disappearances.”
Mamombe, Netsai Marova Cecilia Chimbiri, who had earlier participated in an anti-government protest in Warren Park, said that they were initially arrested at a police roadblock and taken to Harare central police station. Late at night, they were taken by suspected state security agents and driven for an hour, with bags on their heads, to a forest where they were thrown into a pit.
Over the next two nights, four or five men in plain clothes beat and sexually brutalised them and forced them to consume each other’s excrement. They were ordered to watch and sing MDC songs as their friends were terrorised one by one, they said.
They were dumped from a moving car near Bindura before being rescued.
Kazembe claimed there was a “consistent contamination of the various crime scenes and the entire chain of evidence relevant to this case.”
There was “no relationship whatsoever between the findings of the medical examination that was carried out on them by a government medical officer in the presence of two human rights doctors of their choosing on May 15 and the injuries they claim to have suffered,” the minister told a news conference.
He added: “There was no evidence of any swelling, fresh lacerations, wounds or even fractures consistent with the kind of manhandling they claim to have gone through.”
Kazembe claimed the trio had given inconsistent accounts of where they were arrested. None of the police officers who were at the two checkpoints outside the National Sports Stadium and the Harare Showgrounds “testifies to ever having seen the trio or witnessed the events they allege.”
The most “compelling discrepancy”, Kazembe went on, was discovered through the analysis of mobile phone location data from the three women’s phones. The evidence does not show the women anywhere near where they said they were arrested, but instead it shows them moving around Harare including close to the offices of MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa as well as the residence of Chimbiri in central Harare “long after they claimed to have been abducted.”
Mamombe’s Mercedes, which was discovered on May 18 parked close to Harare Central Police Station, was only left there on May 16 after the women had been found, Kazembe claimed, citing “witnesses”.
“Given this maze of lack of clarity between fact and fiction, we cannot forget that the opposition in Zimbabwe is in the habit of staging fake abductions and disappearances ahead of major international events in order to force Zimbabwe onto those agendas in a negative way,” Kazembe said.
The MDC Alliance said the Zanu PF government had a history of abducting and torturing rivals, or causing their permanent disappearance, citing the cases of Patrick Namanyama, Itai Dzamara and Paul Chizuze who all disappeared without trace since 2000. Rights activist Jestina Mukoko was abducted, tortured and held incommunicado for more than two weeks in 2008 as police denied holding her.
“This pattern of state abuse has always been followed by hollow denials and grandiose statements, with no action or follow through,” MDC spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere said in a statement.
“We only need to look at the outcomes of the Motlanthe Commission which investigated the August 2018 shooting of innocent civilians, and the lack of action in assessing the sincerity of the state in carrying out these investigations.”
The MDC Alliance repeated its demand for an independent investigation, accusing Kazembe of “regrettably playing judge, jury and executioner in this grave investigation instead of collecting the evidence and following leads that point to the perpetrators and placing these before an independent court for adjudication.”
“Instead of instituting a genuine attempt to bring criminals to book, the alleged investigation shifts blame to the three women and undermines their suffering at the hands of the perpetrators. Kazembe’s statement only serves to revictimise the trio and deepen the allegations of state bias in handling this investigation,” Mahere added.
