Police claim South Africa is training MDC activists in terrorism

By Tichaona Sibanda
20 April 2007

The ruling Zanu (PF) regime have started undermining President Thabo Mbeki’s mediation efforts by claiming his country is training MDC activists in terrorism.

South Africa is understood to have taken exception to these claims and immediately dispatched it’s intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrills to Harare for an urgent meeting with Didymus Mutasa, the country’ state security minister.

Not only are the claims damaging to South Africa, but it’s feared it will also derail mediation efforts by Mbeki until the ‘air is cleared’ according to analysts. The regime would be happy to delay mediation efforts until closer to elections so that talks would not significantly change anything.

The Financial Gazette reported on Friday that the police, desperate to make terrorism charges against a group of detained opposition activists stick, made the damaging claim in court this week that a South African government security agency trained MDC activists, including an MP, in acts of insurgency and terror.

But the MDC was quick to discredit the claims saying the majority of those accused have never travelled outside the country, let alone outside the capital Harare. MDC MP for Budiriro, Emmanuel Chisvuure said the activists are even laughing at the accusation.

‘Take for instance the case of Nyasha Chikombe, this is his second month in Harare from the rural areas, he doesn’t have a metal identification card as he’s still using a paper one. Now how could he have travelled all the way to South Africa? As I said time will come when they shall have their day in court when it would be proven beyond doubt that they are being framed,’ Chisvuure said.

Thirteen MDC members, including Glen View legislator Paul Madzore and his young brother Solomon, are being charged under the Criminal law Act for training as insurgents, bandits, saboteurs or terrorists. The investigating officer in the case, Wellington Ngena, on Tuesday alleged in court that “between December 2006 and March 2007 in Pretoria and Orange Free State in South Africa, the MDC activists attended or underwent a course of training on how to draw up detailed plans for dummy runs and decoys, creation of dilemmas for the Zimbabwe government and how to use them.”

Alec Muchadehama, the defence lawyer told The Financial Gazette yesterday that before a court appearance by his clients on Monday this week, the police had accused them of having been trained by the highly sophisticated Scorpions.
The Scorpions are the Directorate of Special Operations (DSO) — an arm of the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa. The division is an elite anti-corruption unit comprising mostly intelligence, financial and forensic experts.