Bulawayo’s former mayor implicated in terror campaign

By Lance Guma
26 March 2008

Bulawayo’s former Mayor and Zanu PF senatorial candidate for Khumalo constituency, Joshua Malinga, has been implicated in a two-week terror campaign in the area. Our correspondent Lionel Saungweme reports that the wheelchair bound Malinga is thought to have sanctioned two separate abductions of MDC activists in Saucerstown and North End. In another incident in Saucerstown last week Thursday his campaign team is alleged to have deliberately veered off the road in a campaign truck and hit an MDC activist wearing a party t-shirt. The youth, who is yet to be identified, was treated at Gallen House medical centre in the city after suffering a broken leg. At the time of the incident he was putting up MDC campaign posters.

Explaining the incidents Saungweme said Malinga’s supporters are also abducting MDC activists, then beating them up before handing them over to the police. The strategy he says is to ‘sanitize’ the assaults and make them look like citizens arrests. The police take over the process and insert obscure crimes on the charge sheet. The strategy has been used in the abduction of Duduzile Sibanda in Saucerstown and Tony Benson in North End. Up till now Malinga has maintained a clean-cut image and as a wheelchair user, suffering a polio-related disease, dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of the disabled. If the allegations are true his admirers will be bitterly disappointed.

In July 2002 Malinga was barred from the UK after attempting to travel to a conference in New York, via Gatwick Airport. The UK government argued he was part of the regime violating human rights in Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile on Tuesday police at a roadblock assaulted 3 MDC supporters who were travelling on a bus from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls. The police took offence at the activists singing MDC songs and ordered them off the bus. Saungweme said although one of them managed to run away from the scene the other two were marshalled to a nearby police station and put in leg irons. The police used planks to beat them all over the body. The two have since been treated at Gallen House medical centre.