HARARE — Five years after the abduction of Zimbabwe’s human rights activist Itai Dzamara on 9 March 2015, his wife, Sheffra has petitioned the country’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa over the abduction and disappearance of her husband.
The journalist turned pro-democracy activist went missing after he was abducted by suspected State security agents at a barbershop in his home area called Glen View, a high-density area in the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
In a petition handed at the President’s office at Munhumutapa government building in the capital Harare, Sheffra said she was hurt by not knowing her husband’s whereabouts since his disappearance five years ago.
“My name is Sheffra Dzamara, I am the wife of Itai Peace Dzamara who was forcibly disappeared on the 9th of March 2015 and still remains unaccountable for,” read part of the petition handed to the office of the President.
Sheffra, a mother of two — Nokutenda and Nenyasha, in her petition to Mnangagwa noted “I once wrote you a letter in 2018 and did not receive a response from your office. I then made that letter an open letter.”
Meanwhile, Itai Dzamara was one of the most vocal critics of late Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe before he (Dzamara) was whisked away by his captors from a barbershop in Glenview, his home area.
Five years later, his loved ones — wife and the daughters are still waiting for answers.
But reacting to the petition soon after Mrs. Dzamara handed it into the Zimbabwean President’s Office, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Information issued a press release.
“…every Zimbabwean counts. It is therefore diplomatically unhelpful and misleading to insinuate that the government does not intend to shed light into Mr. Dzamara’s disappearance as if it had a hand in it,” said the press release.
