Police assault MDC-T activists in Bulawayo

via Police assault MDC-T activists in Bulawayo | SW Radio Africa by Mthulisi Mathuthu  November 22, 2013

Police in Bulawayo were Friday accused of assaulting MDC-T activists including party executive member Sekai Holland’s driver.

SW Radio Africa correspondent Lionel Saungweme said Tinevimbo Hove and Elton Sibanda sustained what are feared to be serious injuries forcing Holland to send them for medical check ups.

By the end of the day on Friday their results were still unknown.

Both Hove and Sibanda are well known MDC-T activists in Bulawayo. Hove is also the nephew and former driver to Holland who was the co-minister of national healing in the erstwhile Government of National Unity.

Hove was Thursday driving with fellow activist Sibanda and other male passengers when a driver of another vehicle demanded that he pull his car over.

On asking the other driver to identify himself Hove did not get any reply forcing him to speed away, suspecting he was about to be a victim of a car-jacking.

The other vehicle gave chase to the next traffic lights whereupon the occupants pointed an AK47 at Hove accusing him of ‘disrespect’.

It is then that they identified themselves as police officers before forcing everybody out of the vehicle and forcing them to lie down on their stomachs. One police officer kicked Hove in the face while other officers assaulted the rest of the passengers as they lay helplessly on the ground.

The police then drove their victims to the Criminal Investigation Department homicide section where they proceeded to assault them.

According to Saungweme the police freed their victims after Hove recognised one of the officers assaulting them.

It is then that the police forced their victims pay a $20 fine each for “conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace.”

This incident comes at a time when the state is seen increasingly becoming heavy handed in its dealings with human rights and democracy activists. Almost every week the courts hear cases so petty that even Deputy Chief Justice Luke Malaba recently complained.