Police block Dzamara CBD march

By Blessings Mashaya

Police have blocked a march called to commemorate the disappearance of anti-President Robert Mugabe activist Itai Dzamara scheduled to be held in Harare’s central business district (CBD) tomorrow.

Itai’s younger brother, Patson, told the Daily News yesterday that the police advised them to hold the commemoration at Freedom Square — an open space way outside the CBD.

“They (police) said the situation in the CBD is volatile,” he said.

“We were planning to start our march at Africa Unity Square but the move by the police will not deter us. We are going to have the commemoration at Freedom Square,” Patson said.

Itai — who became popular after staging one-man anti-Mugabe protests dubbed “Occupy Africa Unity Square” — mysteriously disappeared in March 2015 and his unknown whereabouts reach exactly two years tomorrow.

The missing activist’s family accuses Mugabe’s government of being involved in his disappearance, with commissioned police investigations pointing to nothing so far.

In May last year, the Dzamaras released a horrifying and grotesque image which they alleged was of Itai taken from captivity by his alleged abductors.

At a media conference where the images were released, Patson claimed that the country’s feared military intelligence had been responsible for the missing social justice campaigner’s brazen abduction last year.

During last year’s commemorations, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sensationally claimed that State security agents abducted Dzamara because he had intricate details on how the 2013 elections were rigged by Zanu PF.

After his broad-daylight kidnapping, Dzamara’s wife, Sheffra, approached the High Court in a bid to force the police and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to search for her husband.

During the hearing, both the police and CIO denied knowledge of his whereabouts, with authorities saying that investigations into the abduction had hit a dead end. Daily News