Zimbabwe Defence Force’s Military Intelligence Department (MID) abducted Itai Dzamara and subjected him to extreme torture like in the Gukurahundi and State of Emergency days, ex-Information Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo has sensationally claimed.
Professor Moyo was a key member of ousted long-serving president Mugabe until November 2017. In a detailed account, he used microblogging site Twitter to name the men involved in Dzamara’s abduction and disappearance on 9 March 2015.
Kembo Mohadi, then Home Affairs minister, got me as then Information Minister to believe & think that there had been an opposition & foreign inspired plot to stage manage Itai Dzamara’s abduction to put pressure on President Mugabe who had been the target of Dzamara’s demos!”, Moyo said.
He named president Mnangagwa, Mohadi , Chiwenga and Charamba as conspirators .
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1/24 I undertook to do a thread on my take on Itai Dzamara’s abduction & disappearance in response to a question I was recently asked by @Mapfupa. I respectfully engaged @PatsonDzamara on this & got his understanding that Itai’s abduction is a serious, unresolved national matter! pic.twitter.com/4113VaRHL4
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
2/24 The abduction & disappearance of Itai Dzamara on 9 March 2015, and the 15 November 2017 military coup, are thus far the worst blights on the 2013 Constitution that are reminiscent of the hideous evils of the First Republic under the Lancaster Constitution from 1980 to 2013!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
3/24 Let me state upfront that I have no first hand information on what happened to Itai Dzamara. But I have what I believe is useful information that I’ll share here, based on what I came to know & found reliable in the course of my duty as a government minister then!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
3/24 Let me state upfront that I have no first hand information on what happened to Itai Dzamara. But I have what I believe is useful information that I’ll share here, based on what I came to know & found reliable in the course of my duty as a government minister then!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
4/24 Let me further state upfront that while the public presumption is that decisions of & by the government of Zimbabwe are made by Cabinet, this is far from fact. MDC members who served in the GNU would attest to knowing of many key “government” decisions not made by Cabinet!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
5/24 As a footnote, the structure of the agenda has remained embarrassingly Rhodesian. Its key & regular pillar is security; featuring reports from ministries of home affairs, state security & defence. Besides this, matters arising from security reports top the agenda & the time!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
6/24 Rhodesians used this approach to resist the liberation struggle. Everything was war. The retention of the approach after Independence was influenced by the retention of the Rhodesian State of Emergency from 1980 to 1990, superintendent by Mnangagwa up to 1988. A disaster!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
7/8 Anyhow, I often wondered whether Cabinet’s preoccupation with security issues explained why the likes of Abednico Ncube never opened their mouths to make any contribution except when correcting the spelling of their names in the minutes of the last meeting or when eating!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
9/24 Kembo Mohadi, then Home Affairs minister, got me as then Information Minister to believe & think that there had been an opposition & foreign inspired plot to stage manage Itai Dzamara’s abduction to put pressure on President Mugabe who had been the target of Dzamara’s demos!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
10/24 As already intimated, key decisions in the government of Zimbabwe are not made in or by Cabinet. The key decision organs are JOC & the President’s Mondays meeting with key officials headed by the Chief Secretary to the President & Cabinet including heads of security organs!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
11/24 Members of the President’s Mondays meeting & JOC have the highest security clearance & constitute a closed WhatsApp group. One of the members & a very key one, is George Charamba– permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information. He used to try in vain to misinform me!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
12/24 A lot of what I later discovered was misinformation & disinformation about Itai Dzamara’s abduction & disappearance came from JOC & the President’s Mondays meeting with senior staff & it spilled into Cabinet through security reports. The endgame was to misinform the public!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
13/24 Based on briefings from JOC, the President’s Mondays meeting & security reports to Cabinet I made my comments in good but mistaken faith on @BBCHARDtalk in May 2015 & tweeted on 15 July 2015 about Itai Dzamara in the manner I did, as shown in the attachments herewith! pic.twitter.com/WChtP2MGBb
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
14/24 In May 2016, I tweeted I had come to know that Itai Dzamara was abducted; I condemned the abduction & regretted the comments I made in 2015 as Information Minister. On 2 June 2016 #NewsDay published my regrets!
bbnhttps://www.newsday.co.zw/2016/06/dzamara-abducted-moyo pic.twitter.com/klbizVzere— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
15/24 I later got to know that @PatsonDzamara & the Dzamara family had done a lot with the help of lawyers, human rights organisations, individuals & even countries to find out what happened to Itai. My exposure to their pain & hitherto vain efforts deeply troubled me to my core!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
17/24 What is particularly painful for me is the realization that Itai Dzamara’s abduction & disappearance is now surrounded by silence & inaction; reduced to an unforgettable issue for his family alone; yet the matter is a serious national tragedy against the new Constitution!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
18/24 Zimbabwe has an insidious culture of impunity, claimed & asserted by a violent & corrupt clique that views the country as its property. Dastardly acts have been committed with impunity by this clique. The new Constitution & Second Republic require a new look at impunity!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
19/24 Who abducted Rashiwe Guzha & what happened to her? Who abducted Patrick Nabanyama & what happened to him? Who abducted & murdered Cain Nkala & why? Many other compatriots were abducted & murdered in the First Republic between 1980 & 2013 with nobody held to account. Nobody! pic.twitter.com/kFaNfpq8JR
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
20/24 As already mentioned, whereas abductions & disappearances were a characteristic feature of the First Republic, the new Constitution, that is the foundation of the Second Republic, was supposed to banish that. Yet Itai Dzamara’s abduction happened under the new Constitution!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
21/24 In the spirit & letter of the new Constitution & the Second Republic that is crying for a new generation of leadership with a new ethos, I wish to disclose privileged information I got about what happened to Itai Dzamara & why. I share this as a potentially useful detail!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018
22/24 After the controversial dismissal of Emmerson Mnangagwa on 6 Nov 2017, a lot of credible informants came forward with tones of information implicating Mnangagwa & his cohorts in unspeakable atrocities. Really. This is a fact that not even an earthquake will ever destroy!
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) July 13, 2018