Zanu PF thugs assault family for hosting Eric Knight
By Lance Guma
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HARARE – A group of Zanu PF thugs believed to be from the Chipangano gang on Thursday night assaulted a Mbare family for hosting Zimbabwe radio legend Eric Knight who is the aspiring MDC-T candidate for the volatile area.
Nehanda Radio understands Sunny Zvenyika Chibanda and his wife who stay at the Shawasha Flats in Mbare hosted Knight at their home and this did not go down well with the hooligans who have turned Mbare into a warzone.
Only the intervention of the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) team prevented matters from getting worse. Despite a police report being made at Matapi Police Station no arrests, as usual, have been made.
The disturbances did not end there however.
We understand that soon after the JOMIC team left, two more people, Frankie Kanyenze and Lampard Matava, who had accompanied Chibanda were also assaulted while at the Police Station by the Zanu PF thugs.
Chibanda managed to escape from the rowdy thugs.
In what has become a familiar feature of partisan policing in Zimbabwe, the police proceeded to arrest one of the victims in Matava. He remained detained at Matapi Police Station at the time of writing.
Kanyenze has since been hospitalised at a Harare Hospital.
The perpetrators have since been identified as Gift Riot, Kudakwashe Ngomera, Tatenda Ngomera, Everson Ngomera, Chamu Makova, Martin Muunze, Danmore Njitima, Kekenani Bhasikolo, Talkmore Mafurirano, Hebert Nzira and another hooligan identified only as Mbada.
Sten Zvorwadza, another MDC-T aspiring candidate said “I am disturbed by the levels of impunity here in Mbare. Now one person is in custody for being assaulted yet the goons are walking scot free in the community,” he said.
Meanwhile Makoni South MP Pishai Muchauraya said police are moving door to door in Gandanzara, Ward 23 in search of shortwave radios. Muchauraya told Nehanda Radio the police are intimidating villagers in search of the radios.
On Friday police in Bulawayo raided the Radio Dialogue offices and confiscated 180 solar and kinetic energy propelled radios from the premises. Police from Hillside police station as well as Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and Criminal Investigations Department (CID) operatives carried out the raid.
Part of the search warrant they used read “…possession of smuggled radio receivers”. The crackdown is seen as part of a wider plan to restrict access to alternative news provided by external radio stations. Many Zimbabweans have turned off listening to or watching pro Zanu PF broadcasts in the state media.
