The 3rd force was there in Bindura in March 2002. In this clip the father of Trymore speaks of 3rd force.
His son was killed by ZANUPF thugs the same that took Dzamara and Dr Peter in Sept 2019. No one but ZanuPF and CIO abducts and kill it’s own citizens.
Political violence in Zimbabwe has increased dramatically, with record levels of assault, abduction and torture recorded. The CSU found that assaults were overwhelmingly perpetrated by the state’s security forces – including police, military and the secretive Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) – while opposition supporters and civil society activists had been on the receiving end of the increasingly violent treatment. As of late, civilians are also on the receiving end of this violence and torture.
One activist interviewed by the Guardian, Ostallos Gift Siziba, a student protest leader at the University of Zimbabwe, said he was abducted by state security agents in August and taken to the headquarters of Zanu-PF, the ruling party, where he was hung from the ceiling by his feet.
“It is at this time that I experienced brutal, callous and inhumane treatment,” he said. “I was tortured and assaulted with my feet hanging upwards and my head downwards as 21 youths and men exchanged chances to beat me until I passed out.”
Siziba was then transferred to the Harare central police station, where the beatings continued. “At this instant I had lost a lot of blood and I was still bleeding. I was injured in almost all parts of my body. I was denied water, and the right to call my parents, a lawyer, or anyone. I received no treatment and had to become my own doctor,” he said.
Siziba’s experience tallies with testimonies from other victims, indicating that it is not just the frequency of political violence that is on the rise, but the severity too. Even myself i relate to this Siziba’s story. I was tortured and beaten by the CIO, and Zanu Militia. I Still have scars for it. Received no treatment. No one could help me not even the police.
Sadly we can’t report it anywhere because of these organisations working together. I could only escape with my life.
I LISTENED dumbfounded as the assassin in front of me casually discussed the measly £450 bounty on my head.
Luckily for me, the man had ignored requests by feared ZimbabweanPresident Robert Mugabe’snephew to kill me, all because I had politely enquired after his family.
It was the year 2000, and I was working as editor of Zimbabwe’s biggest selling newspaper The Daily News.
The role pitted me against Mugabe, who saw the paper as a mouthpiece for opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) – who had very nearly beaten him in elections that year.
Little did I know when I took the role that it would lead me to be arrested six times, dodge death when an assassin climbed into a lift with me and escape a bombing which tore the paper’s offices apart.All because Mugabe,who died aged 95 earlier this month, feared the message of change my paper was spreading.
Geoff Nyarota, a former newspaper editor from Zimbabwe, was arrested six times by Mugabe’s men. Robert Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe with an iron fist from 1980 to 2017, has died aged 95
An iceberg of corruption
My history with Mugabe started much earlier though – our first meeting was in November 1988 at State House, his residence in the capital city Harare.
Mugabe was then a popular, but much feared, President whose government was increasingly being accused of corruption. He challenged critics to provide evidence of any accusations of sleaze levelled against his ministers.
So I did just that. At 37, I was the editor of a daily paper called The Chronicle which had become known for investigative journalism and we’d been looking into corruption among the Mugabe government.We called it the Willowgate Scandal.
So on that November morning as we waited to speak to Mugabe – who had been the country’s Prime Minister up until the previous year, when he became the powerful executive president – I was anxious.
The previous month, we’d published sensational details of alleged corruption involving several of Mugabe’s much-feared ministers.Suffice to say, he was not amused by the turn of events and invited all editors from the state-owned publishing company my paper belonged to for a meeting.It soon became clear that I was the subject of the hastily convened gathering.
“Which one of you is Comrade Nyarota,” Mugabe enquired.I identified myself, and he quickly asked exactly what Willowgate was about.
Realising only the truth could save me from calamity, I gave Mugabe a comprehensive run-down and explained that what we had unearthed so far appeared to be only the tip of a massive iceberg of corruption.
Some of his honourable ministers were fraudulently acquiring cars at factory price from Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries, a partly state-owned car assembly plant.As vehicles were in high demand, they were selling them on at exorbitant mark-ups.
One minister bought 36 cars, another got a Toyota Cressida semi-luxury sedan and sold it later the same day for four times as much.
Mugabe not amused
Mugabe listened in dumbfounded silence.When he finally spoke, he expressed concern that such serious allegations against his cabinet ministers had been published without warning.
But he conceded he couldn’t stop us making the investigation public.He may have sounded conciliatory, but I knew Mugabe was far from amused.
Sure enough, the following month I was removed from my position, with Mugabe saying I’d been “overzealous”. My deputy Davison Maruziva only lasted a couple more weeks.
A review into our allegations vindicated us and prompted five cabinet ministers to resign. One killed himself not long after.
It was against this backdrop that Mariziva and I set up The Daily News, backed by British investors, in 1998.
We wanted to change the landscape of reporting in Zimbabwe, and it seemed the public agreed as the paper became the most popular in the country within a year.
This was at a time of deep unease within the country, with opposition party MDC gaining traction, the electorate rejecting a new constitution completely and the controversial invasion of white-owned farms spearheaded by people loyal to Mugabe.
Public feelings towards the President and his government were becoming increasingly hostile against a backdrop of soaring unemployment – at 50 percent – rocketing fuel prices leaving even those with jobs struggling to get to them, severe shortages of basic commodities and low standards of living. Around this time there was a lot of civil unrest as the public became dissatisfied with the government
‘An assassin was sent to murder me’
The fearsome president dismissed our paper as an MDC mouthpiece with links to the West. We denied both charges. Then came the parliamentary elections of June 2000.
It was the first time his ruling Zanu-PF party were challenged by a powerful opposition – Mugabe won, taking a reduced majority of 63 seats compared to the 57 won by the MDC, which had been in existence for only nine months.
Some observers attributed Mugabe’s slim victory to electoral fraud and intimidation of voters. Thousands of people were murdered, abducted, assaulted or arrested in an orgy of political violence.
Rural people lived in fear of marauding Zanu-PF youths. Opposition party activists and journalists were arrested, mostly on spurious grounds.
I was arrested on a total of six occasions, with the police normally coming for me under cover of darkness.
Then, a month after the election, an assassin was sent to murder me.
Around this time clashes between youths and the police became commonplace in Zimbabwe. There was widespread feeling the 2000 election had been rigged
Bombing the printers
I came face-to-face with Bernard Masara in the elevator of our office building.While I didn’t know this smartly-dressed stranger, I greeted him and asked about the health of his family, before leaving the lift as he carried on his journey.
Two days later Masara sat in my office, with my deputies present, and admitted being hired by the Central Intelligence Organisation to eliminate me.
He said he had kept me under surveillance for two weeks and had even visited my home. But our encounter in the lift and my genteel demeanour had changed his attitude towards his assignment.
To prove his point he called his handler, Innocent Mugabe, the CIO deputy director, on the phone. Innocent was President Mugabe’s nephew, the son of his sister.
We listened awe-struck as my would-be assassin and his handler haggled over the bounty on my head – Z$200 000, roughly £450 in today’s money.
“It was just the two of us in the lift,” Masara told my deputies. “He asked me about my family. I decided I was not going to let him be killed. “I realised he was different from the man that had been described to me.”
And so my life was spared. The CIO chief died in a car crash a short while later.The Daily News was the country’s only non state controlled daily newspaper and came under fire from government.
Several explosions were heard in the early morning with the printing presses being almost totally destroyed
Then, on January 28, 2001, the totally unthinkable happened – security was breached at our printing factory and a massive bomb explosion totally wrecked the Daily News printing press.
The bomb was detonated by remote control and fortunately no one was killed or injured.
I was away visiting my village when the incident happened, but my heart sank when I visited the scene of senseless destruction.
Information Minister Prof Jonathan Moyo had ominously threatened the demise of a newspaper in just this way.
The security guards noted the registration number of the assailants’ vehicle as it sped off and we gave it to the police, but no one was ever held accountable.
Far from scaring me into submission, I vowed this dastardly act would not silence our newspaper.
By early next morning it was back on the streets, with the defiant headline “Daily News Press Bombed”.
Antagonism between the government and the newspaper escalated afterwards, with Mugabe banning The Daily News outright in September 2003.
It was effectively silenced for seven years, but I remained dedicated to uncovering the truth about what was happening in Zimbabwe – and making sure the public heard it too.
To others, he was a revolutionary hero, who fought racial oppression and stood up to Western imperialism and neo-colonialism.
On his own terms, he was an undoubted success.
First, he delivered independence for Zimbabwe after decades of white-minority rule.
He then remained in power for 37 years – outlasting his greatest enemies and rivals such as Tony Blair, George W Bush, Joshua Nkomo, Morgan Tsvangirai and Nelson Mandela
And he destroyed the economic power of Zimbabwe’s white community, which was based on their hold over the country’s most fertile land.
However, his compatriots – except for a small, well-connected elite – paid the price, with the destruction of what had once been one of Africa’s most diversified economies.
In the end, this came back to haunt him.
The outpouring of joy on the streets of Harare which greeted his forced resignation in November 2017 echoed the jubilation in the same city 37 years earlier when it was announced he was the new leader of independent Zimbabwe.
Although he was allowed to see out his days in peace in his Harare mansion, it was not the end he wanted, having famously boasted: “Only God, who appointed me, will remove me.”
Many Zimbabweans trace the reversal of his – and their – fortunes to his 1996 wedding to his secretary Grace Marufu, 41 years his junior, following the death of his widely respected first wife, Sally, in 1992.
“He changed the moment Sally died, when he married a young gold-digger,” according to Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper, who used to be close personal friends with Mr Mugabe.
That sentiment was common long before anyone dreamed she might one day harbour presidential ambitions, which were the trigger for his close allies in the military and the ruling Zanu-PF party to oust Mr Mugabe from power.
Mugabe the man
While he was sometimes portrayed as a madman, this was far from the truth. He was extremely intelligent and those who underestimated him usually discovered this to their cost.
Stephen Chan, a professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, noted Mr Mugabe had repeatedly embarrassed the West with his “adroit diplomacy”.
Mugabe timeline
21 February 1924:Born
1964:Jailed after being convicted of sedition
1973:Becomes Zanu leader
1980:Becomes prime minister of Zimbabwe
1987:Becomes president under new constitution agreed under deal to end Matabeleland massacres
1992:Wife Sally dies
1996:Marries Grace Marufu
2000:Loses referendum, land invasions begin
2002:Wins presidential election amid widespread violence and fraud allegations
2005:Launches Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out Rubbish), which forces 700,000 urban residents from their homes – seen as punishment for opposition supporters
2008:Comes second in election, violence leads his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai to withdraw from run-off
2009:Forms coalition government
2013:Resoundingly re-elected, Tsvangirai returns to opposition
2017:Forced to resign after army seizes power
6 September 2019:Dies in Singapore, which he visits for hospital treatment.
A nation that does not respect the rights of its citizens is a nation to decline. An unjust law is not a law. We have a moral responsibility to disobey all unjust laws.
You never know if someone is watching you and any offside moves or statements could have you arrested or detained in some murky bunker of an extralegal nature.
Previous public protests and demonstrations have been met with violent state crackdowns which have resulted in the deaths of civilians.
Having come to power through amilitary coup,later sanitized by a contested election, President Mnangagwa’s government has failed to handle the accountability required of them in a truly open and democratic space and seemingly gone on a drive to instil fear and paranoia in the populace. The criticism and the scrutinisation have been too much for them such that they have revoked their own commitments for a New Dispensation and ran back into the opaque systems of old where there is little accountability.
January 2019 protests were followed by an alleged state-sponsored militia that moved in some suburbs beating people with an assortment of weapons that included steel pipes, stones and fan belts.
In the very short space of time that they have overseen the nation the daylight arrests andmidnight abductions of political enemies (Amos Chibaya, Thabitha Khumalo etc.), theatrical performers (Daves Guzha),labour activists (Obert Masaraure),women rights activists (Farirai Gumbonzvanda) satirical comedians (Samantha Kureya) and civil society members (Tatenda Mombeyarara) speak of a regime moving to recreate the Venezuelan climate of fear and paranoia pre-empting any moves against the throne.
hat the regime has successfully done is to show the whole world that it was never a New Dispensation but rather a New Deception. The disproportionate use of police and military violence against unarmed civilians defines a State not sure of its own legitimacy to govern. It has failed. Worse of all they deny these killings and beatings but these images and videos are clear to see. They never do anything to solve these issues. When we try to tell the world what’s really happening they never believe us because they try to destroy all these video and image evidence so the world cannot see how people are being treated. They want things done in their way and not the lawful way. Everywhere is corrupt even the justice system. We are living in fear, running away everyday because of the abuse and brutality from the people that are supposed to be protecting us. We need peace in our nation Zimbabwe.
The protesters were peaceful as usual. It was the police that instigated violence. More video links of police brutality below. Zimbabweans deserve better. A better Zimbabwe
Have the people of Zimbabwe lost the rights to protest? Where is Zimbabwe going to? This is scary after we saw some shootings by the army not long ago.
Why do the power deploy soldiers whenever there is protests? Shouldn’t the police handle such matters in Zimbabwe? Why the soldiers? What is going on? Who is supposed to protect the people?
Talk Rights 