The death of a political activist in Zimbabwe increases fears of a crisis

An activist from Zimbabwe’s main opposition party was found dead by the side of a road in the capital Harare, police said on Tuesday. A party spokesman said he was kidnapped while campaigning for local elections this weekend.

The death of the activist, Tapfumanei Masaya, is the latest in what opposition and civil society leaders say has been a series of violent episodes that have fueled a growing political crisis in the southern African country since national elections were held in August.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his ruling party ZANU-PF retained power during the August elections, despite doubts from regional and international observers about the credibility of the elections.

Masaya, 51, a pastor, was campaigning door-to-door on Saturday to promote a candidate, along with other members of the Citizens Coalition for Change political party, when several SUVs stopped and assailants jumped out and chased them, said Gift Ostallos Siziba. a spokesperson for the party.

When Mr Masaya stopped to help a fellow activist who was disabled, the attackers pounced on them, beat them and led them away in separate vehicles, Mr Siziba said.

The attackers eventually dropped the disabled activist, who was still alive, on the road but stopped Mr Masaya, Mr Siziba said. He was found dead on Sunday, his body disfigured by the nicks of a machete, the spokesman said.

Mr. Masaya’s death has raised alarm in a country where, according to officials from the Citizens Coalition for Change, at least four of their members have been killed since last year. Mr Masaya was the fourth party member to be kidnapped and tortured in the past two months – although the other three survived. according to a message on Xformerly Twitter, by David Coltart, a senator with the party.

In one such case, Takudzwa Ngadziore, a member of parliament, posted a video on Facebook saying it was his own kidnapping. In the short, shaky clip, he is seen in a suit and tie, breathing heavily, and a man wearing a cap with a Mercedes logo and carrying a gun rushes toward him. Then the images end.

Police confirmed Mr Masaya’s identity in a statement released on Tuesday, but said they were still investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.

Farai Muroiwa Marapira, the ruling ZANU-PF party’s director of information and publicity, said it was disrespectful and irresponsible of the opposition to jump to conclusions about the death before the police investigation was completed.

ZANU-PF had nothing to do with Mr Masaya’s death, he said. The opposition, he said, “would rather show political support for the loss of a family.”

Several kidnappings and some of Zimbabwe’s worst post-colonial political violence occurred in the aftermath of the highly controversial 2008 elections, which led to a power-sharing deal between ZANU-PF and the then main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.

The lack of police intervention or other state efforts to curb the violence “creates a culture of impunity in the country, and those behind the kidnappings and rights abuses would continue to do so, knowing that nothing would happen to them,” said Rawlings Magede. , spokesperson for Heal Zimbabwe Trust, a non-profit peacebuilding organization.

Mr Magede said “the human rights situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate” after this year’s elections.

A Southern African Development Community observer mission criticized this year’s vote, saying several irregularities had taken place, an almost unprecedented rebuke from a regional body that tends to avoid open criticism of member states.

The elections, Mr. Siziba said, had created “a crisis of illegitimacy in which the state is turning against its own citizens.”

Mr Marapira rejected this claim, saying the Citizens Coalition for Change had not challenged the election results in court within the time allowed by Zimbabwean law.

“In the media, anyone who gets attention can say whatever he or she wants, whether there is truth, fiction or absence of reality,” he said. “The crisis only exists in the imagination of the opposition.”

Jeffrey Moyo contributed reporting from Harare, Zimbabwe.