BULAWAYO – A business partner of human rights lawyer Siphosami Malunga was physically attacked by East 68 Bar & Grill owner Dumisani Madzivanyati, a Zanu PF supporter, during a violent confrontation over a farm owned by Malunga and peers, it was claimed Wednesday.
Zephaniah Dhlamini was allegedly attacked with a log by Madzivanyati, who has invaded the 553-hectare property in Nyamandlovu, Matabeleland North, after its controversial acquisition by the government in December last year.
The two are both lecturers at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) – Dhlamini being director of the Applied Genetics Testing Center while Madzivanyati, who was accused of threatening to shoot a man in 2017, teaches in the business department.
Malunga condemned the attack on his partner, vowing: “They will have to kill us to take it [the farm]. We are making a report to the Zim Rep Police for what it’s worth.”
“We hold Richard Moyo [Matabeleland North provincial minister] and those he is working with criminally liable. We will now have to defend ourselves against physical attacks too,” the son of the late national hero Sydney Malunga tweeted.
He blamed Moyo for sending Madzivanyati, “with whom he has a corrupt relationship, to peg exactly where we are planting our 8 million onions.”
Malunga, executive director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), said lands officers who were parceling out their farm had allegedly come with specific instructions from Moyo to target their flourishing produce.
He tweeted alleged pictures of Madzivanyati on the property, saying that the ruling party supporter, “who also runs E68 Bar & Grill in Leeside, Bulawayo, whose car you can see parked inside the field attacked Zeph Dhlamini with a log.”
Malunga blamed “Moyo, Obed [likely Obert] Mpofu, Zanu PF chairman and Gatsha Mazithulela, Dep Director General of CIO” for allocating “our farm to CIO operatives and their relatives and cronies.”
Malunga says they had planted vegetables on large swaths of the farm that they bought four years ago. He says the seizure is retribution by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime for his human rights advocacy.
Government, however, argues it acquired the land from a white farmer years ago “for purposes of agriculture resettlement” and that Malunga doesn’t own it.
Madzivanyati was not immediately available for comment.
