HARARE – The family of a 15-year-old rape victim is threatening legal action after her rapist, 59, was released on amnesty by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Bobby Makaza was sentenced to an effective 16 years in prison by a Murewa court in 2019 over the sex attack on the teenager a year previously.
He had served less than five years of his sentence when he was released with more than 4,200 other prisoners on a clemency order signed by Mnangagwa on May 19 this year. The released prisoners included, according to the government, rapists and murderers who had turned 60 years or older.
Rape and murder are specified offences and lawyers for the juvenile say anyone convicted of those crimes is excluded from benefitting from an amnesty.
Tinashe Chinopfukutwa and Paidamoyo Saurombe of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights have written to the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services Commissioner-General Moses Chihobvu demanding to know on what basis Makaza qualified for amnesty.
Chinopfukutwa and Saurombe, acting on instructions from the victim’s family, had given the prisons boss up to Friday, July 7, 2023, to respond to their letter.
If a court rules that Makaza’s release was illegal, the ZCPS could be forced to re-imprison him and others who were freed.
Prisons said the amnesty for 4,270 inmates was designed to decongest Zimbabwe’s jails, but victims of violent crimes said they were not consulted before the perpetrators were freed.
