The day was 11 March 2007 and the police were indiscriminately shooting at innocent people as they violently disrupted the Save Zimbabwe Campaign prayer rally in Highfield, Harare.
As my friend Kudakwashe Matibiri and I joined the melee in running away for our dear lives, we saw a man collapse just a few metres ahead of us. The man had actually been shot dead.
I later learnt the man was Gift Tandare, then a veteran MDC stalwart from Glen View in Harare, He had been callously shot to death in cold blood, never again to go back home alive to be with his family.
During his funeral, as the Tandare family waited for the body at his home in Glen View, CIO agents seized his body from Doves funeral parlour in Harare and drove to bury him at his rural home in Mount Darwin.
Reports at the time said the regime seized his body because they feared that a public funeral would martyrize him and become a rallying call for the democratic struggle in Zimbabwe
The 11 March 2007 violence left many sad, lasting impressions. Several senior leaders of the party, including then party president Morgan Tsvangirai were violently assaulted by the police right inside Machipisa police station.
The battered picture of Morgan Tsvangirai was to invoke an outpouring of international condemnation from the region and the broader international community on the State sanctioned violence in Zimbabwe.
But the Tandare family is to this day struggling to cope with their lives after their father’s life was snuffed out by the State.
A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to assist his son, Gift Tandare Jr, to complete his Sociology and Social Policy Studies degree at the Midlands State University.
Zanu PF has left many orphans and battered souls across the country, including Gift Tandare Jr whose daily needs must prick our collective conscience, empathy, solidarity and assistance.
The boy needs your assistance.
Click HERE: Help Gift Tandare Jr Finish His Degree
