Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Close scrape in the fight against tyranny
An autobiographical political history of Zimbabwe from the 1950s from the perspective of lawyer, Christian leader and politician, DAVID COLTART
THE first attempt on my life occurred shortly after the Zimbabwe/Australia match. I was driving out of town when, providentially, I drove over a broken bottle lying on the road. Concerned that it may have cut a tyre, I stopped my vehicle and inspected the inner sides of my tyres.
This inspection revealed that the inside of one of the tyres had a circular burn on it. It looked as if someone had used a car cigarette lighter to burn a neat hole on the inside of the tyre where it couldn’t be seen. Had I travelled much further on the tyre there is no doubt that it would have burst. Experts who examined it later confirmed that someone had deliberately burnt it in a place that was not easily visible and in a manner that would inevitably cause it to blow out.
The second incident was carefully planned. The first hint that something was afoot came on Saturday, March 1, 2003. On that day I was away from home enjoying a break with my family over a school exeat weekend. My home security team reported on my return that on the Saturday afternoon a white Land Rover Defender station wagon vehicle (of the type used by the CIO and the police “Law and Order” section) with several plain-clothes occupants drove slowly past our house (which is in a cul-de-sac) and back again, with the occupants taking a detailed interest in our house. It did not stop and appeared merely to be on a surveillance mission.
Then, on Monday lunchtime, March 10, a green Land Rover pick-up vehicle, with four plain-clothes policemen inside it (one woman and three men), arrived at my gate. I was at the office and Jenny was out. They demanded to be allowed into the yard but were refused entry by our trusty Fawcetts Security guard. They told the guard all they wanted to know was what vehicles I had and was using – an odd question as this information could easily be supplied by the Central Vehicle Registry. In other words these plain-clothes people wanted to know what vehicle I was using at the time, not so much the vehicles I owned. I asked my law partner Josephat Tshuma to telephone the police to find out what they were after. The police feigned ignorance but did confirm that the Law and Order section had a green Land Rover pick-up, which was allocated to Detective Inspector Taderera. Furthermore, our domestic worker, John Tlou, who had himself been recently detained by the Law and Order section during the World Cup cricket protests, identified one of the policemen in the vehicle as Sergeant Ngwenya, of the Law and Order section.
I flew to Harare the following morning to attend parliament and only returned on Friday, March 14. In my absence a sinister chain of events had unfolded in the vicinity of my home. On Tuesday night, March 12, two men, Charley Mackay and a local veterinary surgeon, Gerrard Stevenage, were robbed of a new vehicle about 2km from my home. Mackay was admitted to hospital with fractured ribs and a ruptured spleen, having been beaten by his assailants. Shots were also fired by one of the hijackers from an AK47 rifle; the cartridge casings recovered from the scene of the crime were clearly marked as being manufactured by the Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI). Ammunition of this type is only available to the police and the military.
On Friday afternoon I was informed about these incidents by my security team and warned to be extra vigilant. While hijackings per se were not completely unusual in Bulawayo, my constituency had never known such a spate of them, nor had government-issue weapons been used before. Furthermore, the police response to the hijackings was pathetic. All of these factors were taken into account in leading to the assessment that there was a deliberate pattern which in turn could well be a precursor to a targeted attack on me.
On the Saturday morning I had a meeting with a client at home. Jenny and two of our children had left home early to attend a school athletics day. After concluding my meeting I left home with our younger son (aged 9) and baby daughter (aged 18 months). As I drove out of the gate and I stopped to speak to the security guard, I noticed a light blue Mazda truck parked further up the cul-desac. It started moving slowly towards me and as it drew level with me I noticed that its occupants were three young men, with shaven heads, in plain-clothes. The man in the middle was holding an AK47 rifle upright between his legs. The vehicle crept past me and then turned right into another street, ostensibly driving towards town. Given all the goings on that week, I was very concerned so I waited a few minutes with the guard before driving off myself, keeping a good lookout.
When I reached the intersection where the Mazda had turned up, I saw it parked some 150m from the intersection on the left-hand side of the road. Now fearing the worst, I drove straight on instead of turning up the same road they were on, as had been my original intention. I drove up a road parallel to the one they were on as fast as I could. However, as I turned up another road, still taking evasive action, I observed in my rear-view mirror the Mazda racing up behind me. I increased my speed even further and made the decision to turn back towards town where I would have more escape options.
It was technology and the bravery of friends that saved me. Trying to sound as calm as possible, so as not to scare the children, I phoned the head of my security team, Craig Edy, and told him I was being chased. We agreed I would try to take evasive action and rendezvous with him near a safe house. Maintaining cellphone contact with Edy, I travelled down Burnside Road towards town and tried to get away from the Mazda, but it kept a distance behind me of approximately 70m. As I approached an intersection near our agreed rendezvous point I sped up as fast as possible and then braked at the last minute and turned left, without indicating, into a side road. Sure enough the Mazda kept pace, although it delayed a bit in turning into the side road, dropping back approximately 100m behind.
I sped along a few blocks and then, thankfully, I spotted Edy parked on the right-hand side of the road outside the Church of Ascension Anglican church. I accelerated to create more space between myself and the Mazda. As I passed Edy I saw him pull out onto the road and intercept my pursuers. I drove another few blocks before turning into a safe house, with Edy following close behind. The electric gates started to shut right behind Edy, effectively blocking the Mazda and he leapt out of his vehicle pistol in hand. The occupants of the Mazda were at a disadvantage because their weapons were in the car, whereas Edy could take a clear shot at them, so they didn’t try to follow him into the yard, but stopped outside.
Reinforcements had been called for and initially they were tasked with driving past unobtrusively to ascertain whether or not the Mazda was still in the vicinity. When the first security detail arrived he confirmed that the Mazda had parked some 50m beyond the gate facing back towards the gate from the direction it had come from. When further security personnel arrived they told us that the Mazda was still there – and when the last person came past he reported that the three men were standing outside their vehicle. None of the security personnel was able to get a registration number for the vehicle as it had been obscured. Soon after the fourth member of my security team arrived in the vicinity the Mazda finally drove off. It was just after 11 am – the ordeal had lasted two hours.
On reflection there is no doubt that this was a detailed plan by state agents to assassinate me under the pretext of a criminal hijacking. Nearly all hijackings in Zimbabwe during that period commenced with high-value vehicles being trailed from town, businesses or shopping centres. The modus operandi used by the gang in my neighbourhood that week was unprecedented. In this case my home and I had been targeted specifically. I was driving an old ramshackle Nissan 2.7 pickup – hardly a vehicle desired by criminal hijackers. My wife had driven out earlier in a far more valuable vehicle, as had my client only minutes before I left.
Several days before the incident I had been asked specifically to meet a councillor in one of Bulawayo’s townships that morning. At the time the meeting was arranged I was surprised by his insistence that we meet. The councillor was subsequently exposed as a CIO operative. The plan was no doubt to get me to a remote venue on my own and to assassinate me under the pretext of a routine criminal, as opposed to political, hijacking. Surveillance had been conducted at my home weeks before the incident and information had been sought regarding what vehicles I was currently using. After the attempt against me the spate of hijackings miraculously dried up, and the gang responsible was never caught.