Headman Jemedze made the ruling on Tuesday after Zanu PF supporters had held a meeting and threatened to go on a retribution exercise against MDC members who had attended the memorial rally which was addressed by President Tsvangirai on Saturday. The rally was attended by over 3 000 party members and relatives of the deceased.
Among those who had been targeted by the Zanu PF militia was August Jemedze. President Tsvangirai accompanied by Mai Tsvangirai had visited the homestead of August Jemedze and laid a wreath at the tombstone of his brother Godfrey Jemedze.
However, Headman Jemedze said no-one had a right to intimidate villagers in his area and would deal with them. The memorial rally was held to remember 16 MDC members from Chiweshe who are part of over 500 MDC who were murdered at the instigation of Zanu PF militia and State security agents in 2008.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) deputy chairperson, Joyce Kazembe, said the delays in announcing results of the 29 March, 2008 presidential elections were caused by heavy “political interference”.
Addressing a media workshop on elections in Kadoma on Wednesday, Kazembe admitted that there was a lot of political interference from Zanu PF.
After sensing that it had lost the parliamentary and local government majority to the MDC, Zanu PF using the State machinery delayed the announcement of the presidential results as its leader, Robert Mugabe had been defeated.
After the results showed that Zanu PF had lost, it solicited the services of State security agents and unleashed untold violence across the country which resulted in the death of over 500 MDC members.
During the weeks before the announcement of the presidential result, ZEC was claiming it was “meticulously verifying” results.
Kazembe said in 2008, there were a lot of human errors but did not rule out mischief from Zanu PF.
“So we would like to eliminate human error (in 2013). When votes are transferred, we hope it will be done through the computer,” said Kazembe.
Post published in: News