We dare our abductors
THERE are some things that will for eternity haunt us till they are resolved and there is lasting closure.
And for Zimbabwe, there are just too many skeletons in our closet which will keep affecting our sleep if we do not shine light on them.
Among these skeletons rattling in our closet are the many murders of Zimbabweans by fellow Zimbabweans since independence in 1980, mainly for political reasons, with Gukurahundi being the belly of the iceberg.
Near the tip of this horrendous iceberg are enforced disappearances, which are described as “the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a State followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person’s fate or whereabouts with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law”.
One of these instances is that of pro-democracy activist and journalist, Itai Dzamara, who was abducted by alleged State security agents and disappeared without trace nine years ago.
Today, March 9, marks the 9th anniversary of Dzamara’s mysterious vanishing from the face of Zimbabwe. And, like his family, we cannot honestly soundly sleep at night knowing fully well that someone among us melted away into thin air. If someone does not tell us what happened to the man, we will forever fear the same fate befalling us.
Dzamara is one among 59 000 souls recorded by the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to have been abducted in 110 countries since 1980. There are also 651 new cases in 30 countries.
Amnesty International deputy regional director for east and southern Africa, Vongai Chikwanda, has pointedly stated out that failure by the Government of Zimbabwe to launch a genuine investigation into Dzamara’s disappearance sends a chilling message to pro-democracy activists.
“His family needs closure from the agonising uncertainty they have been subjected to. The feeling of insecurity and fear that his disappearance has generated is not limited to his close relatives, but also affects the broader civil society community,” Chikwanda has boldly stated and emboldened us also to grab our loud hailers to shout about this issue.
If those who abducted him are still walking this earth, we would like to keep prodding this wound without fear until there is closure because they have absolutely no right to make other people disappear from this earth without trace, when our creator has the decency to openly end our lives and we are buried in known graves or cremated in known incinerators.
No one born of a woman should act god by willy-nilly stealing our relatives, friends and community members from among us. Who dare them act divine to the extent of plucking fellow beings from among us at whim.
We fervently pray that the issue of Dzamara haunts them into their graves if they keep refusing to bring closure to this very traumatising matter.
Little wonder there is hardly real peace in this country because there are too many souls who were unceremoniously whisked away from among us and we never got to know of their fate.