 He was arrested in his home area, Marondera, 80 km south east of
Harare and applied for, and was granted bail in the Marondera Magistrate’s
Court last Friday. The state appealed the bail decision and was given until
June 4 to prove to the Harare High Court why he should not be granted bail
ahead of his trial.
The state has, so far, been unable to provide a single item of evidence that
Kay has done anything, or said anything to incite any violence and about 95
percent of all the post election violence has been caused by members of Zanu
PF including the security forces according to victims who have sought
medical treatment for their injuries.
       Yesterday, members of his family went as usual to deliver him food
– there is almost none available for prisoners from the state – and found
he had was in the process of being moved to Mutoko Prison about 220 km
away. The first post election violence occurred in the Mutoko district in
north eastern Zimbabwe, which had traditionally been a strong Zanu PF area,
but where record numbers of voters decided not to vote for President Robert
Mugabe in the presidential poll.
           Militias prowl the road to Mutoko and there are several heavy
duty police road blocks along this road which is the main highway to
Nyamapanda, the northern border post with Mozambique.
       “There is no reason to move him, it’s just petty spite,” said one of
Kay’s friends yesterday. His wife Kerry is in the welfare department of the
MDC which tracks missing, injured and killed party members.
       Soft spoken Iain Kay is a fluent Shona speaker and was brutally
attacked and forced off his farm in the Marondera area in 2002. However he
was on record after the March elections telling people resettled on
white-owned farms in the Marondera district that none would be forced off
by an MDC government. He told them: “We will not behave like Zanu PF. There
is plenty of land for everyone.”
       However President Robert Mugabe and the state press claim that
hundreds of “Rhodesians” returned to Zimbabwe after the MDC won a
parliamentary majority threatening to take back their land.
       No proof has ever been produced that a single white farmer who was
stripped of his land, house, and farming equipment did go back to look at
their old homes, although the Herald newspaper has run pages and pages of
comment and reports in the last few weeks.
       Threats that “Rhodesians” will return to take back the country with
an MDC government, is the rallying cry put out by Mugabe and the central
plank of his re election campaign.
       He and Zanu PF claim that former Rhodesian security forces, now
mostly in their middle 60’s are planning to invade Zimbabwe if MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai wins the presidential re run on June 27,.
       He beat Mugabe in the first round but failed to win more than 50
percent of the vote and so now faces the run off at a time of unprecedented
violence against opposition supporters.
       Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa did not answer his mobile phone
yesterday.
Post published in: News