Activist and army shooting survivor relives horror under Zimbabwe’s brutal regime

By Staff Reporter

A Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) activist says she is living in fear for her life after suspected state security agents and some militant Zanu PF’s supporters have stalked and tortured her for leading electoral campaigns for the opposition party’s candidates.

Primrose Moyo, 32, is a member of the CCC Ward 41 in metropolitan Harare province.

The area was among the 28 wards in which by-elections were proclaimed after internal fissures within the former MDC Alliance sparked a chain of recalls on party MPs and councillors by faction leader Douglas Mwonzora who was granted legal rights to the opposition party by the courts.

However, Moyo’s attempts to exercise her rights to political affiliation and participation has been thwarted at every turn by suspected state security agents and political rogues who keep threatening dire action if she persisted with her activism.

Moyo is a survivor of the August 1, 2018 shootings by soldiers who were deployed in central Harare to quell opposition protests in the wake of a disputed election that gave Emmerson Mnangagwa his first substantive term as President.

Six people, who include both demonstrators and bystanders, were gunned down in the shooting orgy, while several more were maimed in the most horrendous episode of state brutality since the 2008 presidential run-off campaign killings.

“I escaped unhurt. Many were arrested,” Moyo says, casting back at her near death experience.

But the incident did not break her resolve to see a change of authority from the brutal Mnangagwa led regime to a citizen friendly one led by what would later transform into CCC.

While campaigning for Kudzai Kadzombe who was named CCC candidate for the ward, Moyo and her colleagues also put up a parallel fundraising call to finance their activities and further recruit younger persons to give impetus to the initiative.

“We set up an induction training meeting for the youths to raise awareness on their political rights and the things that we expected them to do during the campaign. The meeting was held at my house. The meeting went on well,” she said.

Moyo would later be visited by suspected Zanu PF militant supporters who threatened her with death if she continued offering her private home to conduct opposition meetings.

One of the aggressors slapped her, after telling her that threats alone were not enough to demonstrate their seriousness.

Moyo’s decision to report the matter to the police did not yield anything as police did not act on her complaint. The opposition says Zimbabwean police are politically compromised.

During one of her visits to the police station to follow up on her complaint, a female police officer, who sounded compassionate about her plight, pulled her aside and pleaded with her to consider abandoning her activism telling the activist she would never get any justice as lower rank police officers, she said, were instructed by their superiors not to act on acts of political intimidation committed by Zanu PF supporters.

Moyo’s case was not helped either by similar pleas by immediate family members to stop engaging in political activities to protect herself from harm.

Relatives who felt irritated by her refusal to turn her back on political activism also warned her not to visit their homes for fear of also being labelled as opposition sympathisers.

However, worse was still to come when Moyo decided to change party meetings from her home to a different location.

On one evening while on their way to the new meeting venue together with two female colleagues, an Isuzu Twin Cab suddenly pulled in front of them and two armed men jumped out and ordered them into the vehicle.

“They blind folded us before they sped off. After driving for about an hour, they took us to an isolated empty building. The following morning, they brought a man who only had one arm. He told us that he lost his arm while fighting against the white colonial regime,” Moyo said.

“He accused our party of being fronts for western governments that were seeking to return Zimbabwe to its white former rulers.”

On the second day of their capture, Moyo said, a man who said he had failed to further his education after abandoning school to participate in the war accused the activists of being “ungrateful born frees” (people that were born after independence of Zimbabwe in 1980) who did not care about the blood spilled during the liberation war.

“He ordered us to stand side by side. He then started slapping each one of us so hard. When he slapped you, you were instructed to go back and rejoin the queue for another round of the abuse,” she said.

The ordeal continued for what Moyo believes was an hour.

The captives’ requests for some drinking water did not yield anything positive either as they were told that water taps had long gone dry due to the opposition dominated councils’ recurrent failures to provide drinking water to residents.

“There is no water here. You can drink your urine,” one of them said in between a sarcastic laugh.

Moyo and her fellow captives’ ordeal ended when they were taken onto the same car that brought them one morning and driven for nearly half an hour in a direction they could hardly distinguish.

“They dumped us in the bush and threatened to kill us if we ever involved ourselves in political party activities. We were helped by some women that we met fetching some firewood in the bush,” she said.

A return to the police station to report their ordeal was yet another roller coaster of emotion.

“When we reported, the police did not take any action but just directed us to come back the following morning,” Moyo said.

The trio’s abduction is the latest in a series of kidnappings involving opposition and rights activists.

The government has suggested that a third force or hidden hand is behind the spate of abductions under President Mnangagwa, who replaced Mr Mugabe. The ruling party officials have also taken turns to accuse the victims of faking the attacks.