WOZA in demo threat over Kereke rape

In an interview with The Zimbabwean this week WOZA Programmes Co-ordinator Magodonga Mahlangu demanded the immediate arrest of Kereke.

“We demand that this issue be actioned by the police and the Attorney General Johannes Tomana as a matter of urgency. There are reports of intimidation and harassment by Kereke of the victim’s family and this should be condemned in the strongest possible terms by all peac- loving Zimbabweans,” Mahlangu said.

She said WOZA have been investigating a similar case in Bulawayo’s Pumula suburb where a child was raped.

“It is the trend countrywide that those with money have resorted to buying freedom and the policed have been selling freedom on the black market in Zimbabwe like cheap Chinese goods. What will happen to those of us who do not have the finance to buy freedom?

“If they do not arrest him now and let justice take its course and they deny seeing us we will be left with nothing but to resort to our usual way of doing things – making the streets impassable,” said Mahlangu.

Kereke a farmer, businessman and chief economic advisor to Gono is accused of raping an eleven-year-old at gun point in October 2010 at the Vainona home of one of his many wives.

A report was made at Borrowdale police station where the docket took months before reaching the Attorney General’s office. This only happened after a threat from lawyer Charles Warara who took it upon himself to follow up the case.

Warara said they were contemplating private prosecution, but the family had been intimidated into submission by Kereke.

“We now think there is a deliberate ploy to intimidate everyone connected to the case including the lawyers and we will take necessary protective measures to because no one is safe anymore.

“You very well know there is a case in which a gun was used and the person still has the gun so anything can happen,” Warara wrote to the police in a letter dated January 13.