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St Mary's opposition candidate remanded in custody
Zimbabwe Youth Forum
March 04, 2008

Marvelous Kumalo the opposition MDC-Tsvangirai candidate for St Mary's has been remanded to 18 March (in custody) following his arrest on Friday 29 February after he embarked on a massive door-to-door campaign ahead of the joint election penciled for March 29.

A door-to-door campaign which only began with 15 youths ended up with more than 120 youths distributing fliers, singing and chanting anti-ZANU-PF slogans throughout St Mary's a development which attracted the ire of Darlington Nota, the ZANU-PF candidate for St Mary's who responded by calling the police from the law and order section from Makoni Police Station who confronted Muroyi's campaign team in the company of rowdy ZANU-PF youths. Kumalo was arrested under the draconian POSA.

This pandemonium which ensued culminated into the axing of Kumalo's supporter one Tafadzwa Maranganwa who is currently battling for his dear life at a private hospital in Harare. As he innocently arrived at the police station to report this unfortunate incident, Kumalo was arrested alongside 9 other supporters for public violence. No arrests have been made so far although the assailant is a well known ZANU PF supporter popularly known as Chin'ai in St Mary's township.

Kumalos' ordeal was further aggravated by the fact that his rival contender, Job Sikhala of the MDC Mutambara faction, a spent-force in politics, who is doing his attachment at Makoni magistrate courts (being a law student at UZ) is rumored to have urged the state to treat Kumalo harshly by keeping him in remand till post election period so that he does not get access to the electorate.

As Youth Forum we strongly urge the state to be impartial and urgently release Kumalo from this unlawful custody such that he can have enough time to campaign. We view Kumalo's bid to get into parliament as a great success for the Youth Forum which has always campaigned for greater representation of and participation by young people.

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