By Lance Guma
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A sombre atmosphere engulfed Warren Park in Harare today as thousands of MDC-T activists including party president Morgan Tsvangirai laid to rest Rebecca Mafikeni, who died in custody at the hands of Mugabe’s regime.
Mafikeni the MDC-T Vice-Organising Secretary (Youth Assembly) for Harare Province spent two years locked up inside Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. She was one of 29 MDC-T supporters charged with killing a policeman in 2011.
Detained at the notorious FB2 section, Mafikeni died at Parirenyatwa Hospital where she had been admitted after her condition deteriorated. A few months ago we reported how she had lost her eye sight. We understand that she eventually succumbed to meningitis on Monday, during the Heroes Holiday in Zimbabwe.
Speaking at Mafikeni’s burial, Tsvangirai criticised the country’s justice delivery system and prison conditions. Many people in the legal fraternity say they have lost all respect for the trial judge in the Glen View case. The judge has even been christened with the title of ‘Injustice’ Chinembiri Bhunu.
Countless applications for bail were denied by Justice Bhunu who faced accusations of receiving instructions from Zanu PF in a highly politicised case. Other court applications filed by Mafikeni’s lawyers to move her from Parirenyatwa Hospital to a private clinic in Harare were also turned down.
Nehanda Radio was the first to break the sad news of Mafikeni’s death after a source at the prison informed us via our Citizen Reports platform on Whatsapp. We also reported how prison officials continued to defy a court order to provide medical attention to the detained activists especially in August of 2011.
The brother and father of the murdered cop testified in court that the MDC-T group including Mafikeni were innocent and that state security agents had in fact killed Mutedza. Justice Bhunu refused to accept this evidence and even went on the offensive attacking the integrity of Mutedza’s family.
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Mafikeni becomes another victim of a heartless regime that pursues power at any cost. At the time of the arrests Zanu PF was trying to build a dossier of evidence to be presented at a SADC summit and make claims that the MDC-T and not them was behind the violence in the country.
Meanwhile MDC-T activists Tungamirai Madzokere, Yvonne Musarurwa, Last Maengahama and Simon Mapanzure remain in custody at Chikurubi Prison despite the State case having fallen to pieces with contradictory witness accounts and the accused persons having provided strong alibis.
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