HARARE – The MDC Alliance says it has found no “conclusive evidence” that one of its leaders was an informer for the Central Intelligence Organisation whose agents abducted and tortured university student Tawanda Muchehiwa in July.
Tendai Masotsha, the chairperson of the MDC women’s wing in Bulawayo province faced questions after the 22-year-old Muchehiwa – a nephew of ZimLive editor Mduduzi Mathuthu – was seized from a parked car as they sat together on July 30, the eve of planned anti-government protests.
Masotsha and two other nephews of the journalist, who were inside a hardware shop at the time of the raid, were taken to the main police station but she was released after several hours of questioning. One of Mathuthu’s nephews, Advent Mathuthu, was charged with incitement of violence over Masotsha’s protest flyers found in the BMW he was driving, but prosecutors surprisingly dropped the charges.
Muchehiwa was driven out of town and tortured for three days and was only released after a court gave police 72 hours to produce him, with a judge accepting that police knew who was holding him. Doctors said Muchehiwa’s kidneys were failing when he was taken to hospital.
Jameson Timba, a senior MDC Alliance official who was part of a committee probing Masotsha, said they were satisfied “on the balance of probabilities” that she had not collaborated with the state agents.
“After considering the evidence before it, the committee concludes that there is no conclusive evidence to link Tendai Masotsha to the abduction of Tawanda Muchehiwa. There is no smoking gun,” Timba told a news conference in Harare on Monday.
Timba said they “examined all documents relevant to the case including media reports in print, audio and video.”
“In addition, the committee engaged and interviewed all stakeholders including the family and legal representatives of Tawanda Muchehiwa, Tendai Masotsha and other members of the party,” he added.
Neither Muchehiwa nor his cousins Advent Mathuthu and Amandlenkosi Mathuthu who spent some time with Masotsha at the police station were interviewed, ZimLive has confirmed.
Masotsha told the committee that police officers at Bulawayo Central Police Station purported to release her just after 8PM, but she was abducted by state security agents shortly after stepping out of the station. She claimed she was driven into the bush and tortured until about 1AM when her abductors dumped her near her home.
Timba said he did not know if Masotsha filed a police report about the incident.
Dozens of anti-government activists and independent journalists were abducted, arrested or forced to flee their homes after President Emmerson Mnangagwa said protests planned for July 31 were an “insurrection.”
ZimLive obtained CCTV footage of Muchehiwa’s abduction. A number plate from one of the six vehicles, a Ford Ranger, led us to a Ruwa resident who said he was renting it out through Impala Car Rental.
Impala Car Rental refused to give Muchehiwa’s lawyer details of the driver, in defiance of a court order. The company claimed police had taken all the files, but the police investigation has gone nowhere.
Muchehiwa’s lawyer Nqobani Sithole said on Monday that the Zimbabwe Republic Police had re-assigned the investigation to a team from Gweru led by Superintendent Pedzai Dzindimu, but called the latest effort a “waste of time.”
Muchehiwa, meanwhile, is admitted at a medical facility in South Africa after concerns about his mental health, Sithole said.
“When Advent went to court, police filed an affidavit requesting that the case be stopped. What they were protecting are the identities of the arresting officers, who were acting in common purpose with the people that abducted Tawanda. We are now into a third investigating officer for the case and honestly, it feels like a waste of time. They know who did it, they just need to make arrests,” Sithole said.
RECAP: TAWANDA MUCHEHIWA WRITES ABOUT HIS ABDUCTION
