UNTIL this week’s abduction of Citizens Coalition for Change lawmaker Takudzwa Ngadziore, the government was vehement that previous abductions were staged-managed to score cheap political points by the opposition in the post-poll period.
Government questioned why the so-called abductions coincided with key regional and international events.
Abduction claims, we were told, were meant to soil the name of the government in the eyes of the international community after the ruling Zanu PF party romped to victory in the August 23 and 24 elections.
Thanks to technology, Ngadziore this week provided the missing piece of the jigsaw by recording his abductors as they pounced.
In the process, Ngadziore exposed that abductions were real and there are people behind it.
The youthful MP became the third member of the CCC to be abducted after councillor Womberaiishe Nhende and former Mabvuku-Tafara legislator James Chidhakwa met the same fate recently.
All the victims of abductions have the same story: they are beaten up, injected with an unknown substance and dumped far from their homes.
Ngadziore was dumped in Mazowe, Mashonaland Central province; Chidhakwa in Acturus, Mashonaland East; and Nhende in Mapinga, Mashonaland West.
- CCC MP Ngadziore abducted, tortured
- Protect citizens from abductions
- Editorial Comment: Abductions, torture now a serious cancer
- Brutalised CCC MP lashes out at police
Keep Reading
The abductions come as there is a surge in post-poll violence against opposition supporters after the CCC leader Nelson Chamisa dismissed the results as a “gigantic fraud”.
They also come as the Sadc leaders are meeting in Angola today for some housekeeping issues in the bloc in which Zimbabwe’s situation will also feature.
The surge in abductions comes as the government has shown reluctance to criminalise enforced disappearances and ratify the United Nations International Conventions which protects citizens from being abducted.
Civil society groups have been piling pressure on the government which is yet to domesticate the International Convention Against Enforced Disappearances to ensure the prosecution of perpetrators. It was signed in 2007.
We still have unresolved issues of Itai Dzamara who has not been found since his abduction in Glen View, Harare, eight years ago.
We exhort the government to protect citizens and bring to book the perpetrators of abductions. They should start with those that abducted Ngadziore as their names and faces are all over the internet, thanks to the digital community which was quick in naming and shaming them.
Prosecution of the abductors will send a signal on the government’s intentions to halt abductions and enforced disappearances.
The reluctance to domesticate the International Convention Against Enforced Disappearances means abductions and enforced disappearance are here to stay.
We urge the civil society organisations, the church and citizens to ratchet pressure for the government to stop abductions.
Yesterday, it was the civil society under attack. Today, the opposition CCC members are under siege and tomorrow it could be anyone. People should always feel safe in their country, unless it’s at war.
