Mugabe responds to Itai Dzamara abduction

Former President Robert Mugabe for the first time responded to a question from journalist Kumbirai Mafunda who sought his comment on the abduction of fellow journalist turned activist Itai Dzamara.

Mugabe convened a press conference at his Blue Roof Mansion in Harare and fielded questions from local and international journalists about a variety of subjects including Monday’s election.

Journalist Mafunda, asked Mugabe if he was not worried by the abduction of Dzamara, who on 9 March, 2015 was kidnapped by four men as he left a barbershop near his home in Harare in 2015

Mugabe professed ignorance on who might have abducted him and cheekily suggested that maybe Zimbabweans were asking the same people who abducted Dzamara to find him.

“Why take him away, what harm did he do. I did not see, the harm that he had done,” Mugabe said of Dzamara.

Dzamara was arrested after he called on then President Mugabe to step down in a petition that was delivered to the presidential Munhumutapa Offices. He was arrested, assaulted and tortured several times for repeated protests at the Africa Unity Square in Harare.

Dzamara was abducted from a barbershop in Glen View, Harare. The four men who abducted him first accused him of stealing a cow before they bundled him into a white Isuzu twincab vehicle. 

Watch Mugabe respond to Itai Dzamara question