MDC Alliance 2018 election candidate Gift Konjana, who later defected to Zanu PF, has gone missing.
What began as a few worrying hours has stretched to days, then weeks — and now nearly a month.
There has been no credible explanation. No official clarity. No reassuring update.
Just silence.
And in Zimbabwe, silence in such circumstances is never neutral.
It is ominous.
Reports suggest that tensions had been brewing within ruling party structures in Mashonaland West, where senior officials allegedly resisted Konjana’s imposition as a by-election candidate ahead of long-standing party activists.
If true, that context raises uncomfortable questions about whether his disappearance is purely coincidental.
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His family waits in anguish.
And based on Zimbabwe’s grim history, their fear is not unfounded.
On March 9, 2015, Itai Dzamara was abducted by five unidentified men, widely suspected to be State agents, while sitting in a barber shop in Glen View.
He vanished without a trace.
He has never been seen again.
On June 19, 2000, Patrick Nabanyama, an election agent for MDC candidate David Coltart, was abducted from outside his home in Nketa, Bulawayo, by suspected Zanu PF militants.
He was dragged onto a truck in front of his family.
He, too, was never seen again.
These are not isolated cases.
They are part of a pattern — one that has cast a long, dark shadow over Zimbabwe’s political landscape.
Some have been fortunate enough to return alive.
Joanah Mamombe, Netsai Marova and Cecilia Chimbiri were abducted in 2020 and later found alive, though traumatised.
Others have not been as fortunate.
In November 2023, Tapfumaneyi Masaya, a Citizens Coalition for Change supporter, was abducted in Mabvuku.
His body was later found dumped.
That is the brutal reality Zimbabweans are being forced to confront: disappearances that begin with denial, followed by silence — and too often end in tragedy or permanent uncertainty.
Against that backdrop, Konjana’s disappearance cannot be treated as just another missing person case.
It carries the weight of history, the burden of precedent and the urgency of preventing yet another unresolved injustice.
This is why legal intervention is no longer optional — it is necessary.
Human rights lawyers must urgently seek a writ of habeas corpus, compelling the State to account for Konjana’s whereabouts.
The law is clear: when a person disappears under suspicious circumstances, the burden rests with the State to produce the individual — alive or dead.
Anything less is a failure to conduct constitutional duty.
Enforced disappearances are not just crimes against individuals.
They are crimes against society.
They instil fear, silence dissent and erode public confidence in institutions meant to protect citizens.
If people can vanish without explanation, then no one is truly safe.
Today it is Konjana.
Tomorrow, it can be anyone — an activist, a journalist, a politician or an ordinary citizen caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That is why this moment demands more than quiet concern.
It demands outrage, accountability and action.
The State must move swiftly to establish the facts, provide answers and ensure that those responsible — whoever they are, are brought to justice.
Zimbabwe cannot continue normalising disappearance as a feature of its political landscape.
Gift Konjana must be accounted for.
And the practice of enforced disappearances must stop forthwith without exception.
