By Takudzwa Changadeya
Womberaishe Nhende, a member of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), has shared his harrowing experience of abduction, disclosing that during his torture, the perpetrators expressed their disappointment in the opposition party, as they had once held high expectations for its competence.
On a social media platform, CCC revealed that Nhende was forcibly taken during the weekend, subjected to physical violence, given drugs, injected with unknown substances and later dumped in Mapinga, Mashonaland West Province.
“Our Glen Norah councillor, Womberaishe Nhende… was abducted, tortured, drugged, and dumped in Mapinga by the regime. His only “crime” is being a member of CCC,” reads the post.
In a video posted on the same platform Nhende recounted his captors’ demands.
“They argued that as members of the opposition, it was our responsibility to bring about change and take decisive action.
“Their reasoning stemmed from the fact that they are not happy with the current situation and that they are disappointed in us as the opposition,” he said.
Nhende revealed that his captors expressed discontentment with their own circumstances.
“They were citing insufficient remuneration as an additional factor fueling their desire for change.
“They believed that the opposition party ought to take the necessary steps to achieve the desired change since their power was limited,” he said.
The irony is that, when claiming that they had no intentions of plotting anything, they said social media was filled with information about their plans to hold protests against the recent ZEC results that favoured the current elected president, Nhende added.
“Here lies the irony, they were asserting that we were just denying being involved in planning protests, but social media was flooded with information about our active plans to organize demonstrations against the recent ZEC results, which favored the currently elected president
Meanwhile, this follows after another CCC activist, Nelson Mukwenha, was allegedly abducted by suspected State security agents on August 26, just two days after the polls.
According to Amnesty International, on August 26, Mukwenha was part of a crowd of people that prevented suspected security officials from abducting the party’s spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi in Harare.
Mukwenha was reportedly picked up, later that evening, by suspected security officials at his home in Highfields, Harare and was then tortured and dumped in a forest in Mapinga.
