Activist arrested for alleged voter education

By Lance Guma

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HARARE – An advocacy officer with the Students Solidarity Trust (SST) was on Tuesday arrested by police and detained at Marlborough Police station after making a presentation on elections at a workshop in Mt Pleasant.

Nehanda Radio understands Trevor Murai was arrested by plain-clothes officers who were pretending to be church members during a workshop organized by the Christian Alliance. They arrested him just as he finished his presentation.

Murai was taken to Marlborough Police station where he spent the whole night.

SST officials who made enquiries at the police station were only told he will be transferred to Harare Central Police Station Law and Order Section early on Wednesday where charges are going to be preferred against him.

According to lawyers who visited Murai, his case was recorded by the police as ‘embarking on voter education’ in the Detention Book. But the SST queried how “a mere presentation on elections suddenly becomes voter education?”

Under the Electoral Act as amended in 2012, voter education can only be conducted with the authority of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), a body whose secretariat is packed with Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe loyalists.

As Zimbabwe approaches elections set for this year police and state security agencies seen as loyal to Mugabe and his party have stepped up their harassment of activists and organisations whose work threatens the regime.

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