HARARE – MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa says he has asked SADC chairman Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa to lean on Zimbabweans to “halt this unmerited persecution” after Zimbabwean operatives attempted to abduct senior official Tendai Biti after he sought asylum in Zambia.

Biti is one of close to a dozen leaders who have gone underground in Zimbabwe fearing torture or assassination at the hands of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ruthless enforcers.

Chamisa said he had spoken to Ramaphosa, who was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Mnangagwa after his contested narrow victory in the July 30 Presidential Election.

“The persecution of leaders Tendai Biti, Morgan Komichi, Happymore Chidziva and other party officials by the state is unjustified and unacceptable,” Chamisa said on Twitter late Wednesday. “I raised this matter with President Cyril Ramaphosa whom we count on to persuade the perpetrators to halt this unmerited persecution. The weak terrorise!”

Chamisa’s spokesman Nkululeko Sibanda told ZimLive.com the telephone conversation with Ramaphosa was one of many Chamisa has had with world leaders in recent days, including the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

“The president is in constant touch with various international leaders in an attempt to resolve the crisis that has been occasioned by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC),” Sibanda said.

United States Congressman Eliot Engel, a Ranking Member of House Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, on Wednesday accused Zimbabwean authorities of criminalising opposition.

“Political opposition is not a crime. The government of Zimbabwe’s pursuit of Tendai Biti, a senior member of the opposition MDC Alliance, is outrageous and casts more doubt on the government’s claims that it’s turned a page on its past use of violence and intimidation,” he said on Twitter.

Biti fled Zimbabwe into Zambia early Wednesday. Zimbabwean operatives tried to seize him at the border but were stopped from doing so by dozens of Zimbabweans who were at the border.

Dozens of other activists remain in hiding in an alarming escalation of tensions in Zimbabwe, triggered by a disputed Presidential Election result giving Mnangagwa a narrow win.

Chamisa, who is due to challenge Mnangagwa’s win at the Constitutional Court before Friday’s time limit, says he won the election “emphatically”, but ZEC “massaged” the figures in a four-day delay in announcing results that ended in deadly protests on the streets of Harare. At least seven people died, and dozens others were injured after soldiers opened fire.

International condemnation has been swift, led by the European Union and the United Nations.