×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

Kombi crash: Cops arrest mourners

Politics
Ailing parents of the late commuter omnibus driver involved in the accident which killed eight people on Wednesday were arrested together with seventy-five other mourners after the burial of their son, Jack Ndeketeya, an MDC-T activist, turned political. Suspected Zanu PF youths allegedly wreaked havoc, provoking the mourners who are said to have retaliated, leading […]

Ailing parents of the late commuter omnibus driver involved in the accident which killed eight people on Wednesday were arrested together with seventy-five other mourners after the burial of their son, Jack Ndeketeya, an MDC-T activist, turned political.

Suspected Zanu PF youths allegedly wreaked havoc, provoking the mourners who are said to have retaliated, leading to their subsequent arrest.

Thirty-three of the arrested were still languishing in holding cells last night at Harare Central Police Station, charged with assault and theft, according to their lawyer, Gift Mtisi.

Police spokesperson James Sabau last night confirmed the arrest but said it was the mourners who provoked farmers at Boka Tobacco Auction Floors.

“People were going to a funeral in a convoy blowing vuvuzelas. It is alleged that one of them in (MDC-T) party regalia, went to Boka and blew it at farmers. Some were incensed and beat him up. He then went to call his colleagues and they came and attacked the farmers,” he said, adding that they will appear in court soon.

However, witnesses said the suspected Zanu PF activists organised a roadblock at the Mbudzi bus stop along Harare-Masvingo highway where the mourners were coming from burying the driver, a ward committee member of MDC-T in Kuwadzana.

They allegedly started throwing stones and attacking the mourners who retaliated leading to a fiasco at the roundabout.

When NewsDay managed to sneak into the cells at Warren Park Police Station masquerading as relatives, Ndeketeya’s 65-year-old father, Billiart, who said he survives on medication, was in tears and even refused food.

His wife, Esten said this situation was compounding their misery.

“They should release my relatives and my husband who is sick and in need of medication. Since the arrest, he is not eating while my relatives who came from different areas are here,” she said.

“I have my sisters, aunts, sons, daughters and my mother in here who have nothing to do with all this politics. Pastor Dominic who presided over the funeral was also arrested,” she said before breaking down.

She said traditional rituals that take place after burial have also not been observed.

Nelson Chamisa, the MP for the area, said it was inhuman for mourners to be treated in this way.

Chamisa said it was unAfrican for people in mourning to be incarcerated. He lashed out at the law enforcers for distorting a genuine funeral and politicising it.

“It’s unheard of. It goes to the heart of what we always say on how we are being treated by the police. We simply ask to be treated as equal citizens and this act by the police is inhuman,” he said.

“Some people who have been arrested are from the villages and don’t even know Harare, let alone the politics the police are forwarding,” he said.

Chamisa’s personal assistant, Fortune Ngarande, who was among the mourners, was also arrested.

MDC-T youth assembly secretary-general Promise Mkwananzi said the youths in the party were in the process of petitioning Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri, in protest.