Mnangagwa foe Sybeth Musengezi arrested after rogues gate crash press briefing
By Staff Reporter
Rogues on Tuesday disrupted former Zanu PF activist Sybeth Musengezi’s press conference in Harare before a group of uniformed police officers moved in to arrest him.
Musengezi came into the public spotlight back in 2021 when he boldly launched a challenge against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s legitimacy in the courts.
The firebrand activist and presumed ally to Vice President Constantino Chiwenga was back in the news on Tuesday after organising a media briefing where he had sought to speak on the “The State of the economy (massive unemployment, corruption, poor state of the informal sector etc)”.
But Musengezi could hardly do the press briefing after two unidentified men wearing some green aprons gate-crashed the event, pulled down his banners and forced the activist out of the Media Centre, venue for the abortive briefing.
Images posted on social media show a stunned Musengezi being confronted by the men who were hiding their faces with masks while pushing him out of the building.
A group of police officers also joined in to force Musengezi out and onto their truck that waited outside.
It was not immediately known why Musengezi was arrested although there are strong beliefs the action was part of the current government’s attempts to silence all voices spotlighting massive corruption under the Zanu PF administration.
Musengezi first came into the public spotlight in 2021 when he challenged his own party Zanu PF over how it “unconstitutionally and illegally convened, constituted and conducted a Central Committee meeting on 19 November 2017 to readmit and appoint Mnangagwa interim leader pending ratification by the extraordinary congress” the following month.
He was later arrested for fraud after he allegedly misrepresented his residential address to Zanu PF for personal gain.
Musengezi was later acquitted at the close of the State’s case by a Harare magistrate.
