Wilson Johwa
14 January 2009
Johannesburg — A ZIMBABWEAN activist in SA yesterday described his midnight abduction at gunpoint and dramatic escape facilitated by some of his disgruntled captors.
Bothwell Pasipamire, who is in a South African safe house waiting to be reunited with his family, was a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) councillor in Kadoma, 140km southwest of Harare. All but one of the 17 councillors in the town, formerly a Zanu (PF) stronghold, belong to the MDC.
About a week after the abduction of Zimbabwe Peace Project director Jestina Mukoko last month, Pasipamire was taken from his house at gunpoint by four men.
More than two hours after his midnight abduction, he was delivered to what is suspected to be the Zimbabwean government's infamous Goromonzi torture camp. During his interrogation, an "army warrant officer Mabhunu" said "it was his job to sort out people like me and that he would finish off all MDC members", Pasipamire told a press conference in Johannesburg yesterday.
During his three-day ordeal, the 30-year-old former security guard said he was intensely questioned, sexually assaulted and could hardly sleep as he frequently heard other prisoners scream.
From the midnight parades, during which prisoners and their cells were sprayed with water, he counted 23 other captives. These excluded inmates of what he believed was the women's wing, where Pasipamire suspected Mukoko was held.
In front of a video camera, inmates were forced to act as though they were beating up a uniformed soldier.
"We were made to pretend we were beating and kicking him and he rolled on the ground, crying. The film crew covered it all," Pasipamire said. A contrived interview was conducted in which Pasipamire was made to admit undergoing military training in Botswana.
Despite strenuous denials from Botswana's government, Zimbabwe accuses its vocal neighbour of helping the MDC run a training camp in preparation for destabilising Zimbabwe.
Pasipamire said he escaped Zimbabwe with the help of some of his captors, who he said were members of the Central Intelligence Organisation. He declined to give details to protect those who helped him get to SA.
The continued detention of about 40 MDC members is threatening the September power-sharing agreement as the party insists on their release before considering implementation of the deal.
Mukoko and 16 others face treason charges. She is alleged to have tried to recruit people for military training to overthrow the government. On Monday the supreme court refused to hear an urgent application to have the activists' continued detentions declared unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku ruled that the application was not properly brought before him and should be taken back to the magistrate's court to restart the cumbersome procedure.
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So you have links to your'facts'? Please post one to your 'fact' that stated that 'nearly 1 million children were raped in the uk last year'. I await your response.
The rhodie propaganda machine rocks: what a lie, a lie beyond the outer zones of the concept of 'lie.'
Rhodies, as evidenced by the Clinton-Helms-Biden strangehold on the innocent lives of Zimbabweans, and rhodies were behind the perfidy of the troika, would do anything to get the land back.
THE LAND WILL NEVER REVERT, however.
Mano o mano.
Shows how much you know about relitively recent history. You are convinced that the west backed Rhodesia, work it out, If it wasn't for the peanut farmer and the thatching woman from stopping the rhodesian forces blasting the opposition into the indian ocean, you would not be living in your new dilapiated ruins all around you. Your house must be a palace, right, leaking roof, rubbish all around you, dying people in your garden, starving children at your table, cholera in your toilet, mud coming out your taps, cut worms in the rotting veg, anthrax in your diseased cattle, which… [Read Full Text]
Yes, people escape the US,UK,EU and Australia, lol the only ones that do are drug runners or bankrupt people!
Come on get serious you tools! People escape to these countries because of poverty!
Jellyhead, for once I agree with you! Imagine that. Chokora's comment that
"nearly 1 million children were raped in the uk last year"
was indeed
"a lie, a lie beyond the outer zones of the concept of 'lie.".
I'm glad we are finally getting on to the same page.
Rhodie wat, we Africans do not serve as surrogates of equals, herein Chokora.
Chokora knocked you out on the sanctions issue. I expect him to bulldoze your nihilistic rhodie personality seasonably.
AND THE LAND SHALL NEVER AGAIN REVERT TO RHODIES. NEVER AGAIN.
GLORY TO COMRADE MUGABE, SECOND; AND GLORY TO THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE, FIRST.
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Zimbabwe is a close ally of South Africa. Why does South Africa allow these seditious creeps to operate out of its territory?
Would we expect such loud publications against the USA to come out of Canada? What course of action would the USA, eh, encourage Canada to take against such individuals?
[Note: A few reporters in USA and Canada who got the nerve to say or print derogatory things about Pres Bush soon found themselves without a job. Reporters in USA thus toe the line of the pink-slip_avoidance exercise known as 'self-censorship'.]
[Note: News stories and facts… [Read Full Text]