Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

Another violent loss for Zimbabwe's opposition
Stephanie Nolen, Globe and Mail
May 24, 2008

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080523.zimbabwe24/BNStory/International/home

The first time the Zimbabwe police arrested Tonderai Ndira back in 1998, he didn't resist. In fact, he was smiling when they crammed him into a tiny prison cell with other democracy activists, and his comrades asked him why.

"He said we had to be strong because we were going to see such things," Reuben Tichareva, who has been one of Mr. Ndira's closest friends since the age of 5, recalled yesterday. "He said such arrests will become a routine thing as the struggle continues."

Indeed they did. Mr. Ndira was arrested so often over the next decade - 35 times in all - that his friends and family started to believe he was invincible. No matter how long the police held him, or how much they beat him, he emerged alive and gentle and suffused with enthusiasm to educate people about the need for political change.

Because Mr. Ndira led with such dignity and courage, "we called him our Steve Biko," Mr. Tichareva said, in a reference to the legendary South African anti-apartheid activist. And now he and Mr. Biko have something else in common: Mr. Ndira, too, has been viciously slain in his early 30s.

He was dragged from his bed by six armed men on May 13, beaten savagely in front of his wife and two children, and stuffed into an unmarked car.

His body, or most of it, was found Wednesday on the other side of town.

Mr. Ndira was part of a group of young people who helped found Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change in 1999. But he had been politically active long before that, campaigning for the rights of people in Mabvuku, the slum neighbourhood where he grew up, then pushing for a democratic constitution as the regime of President Robert Mugabe grew increasingly autocratic.

Mr. Ndira rose through the ranks of the MDC, and for the past few years had served as an irrepressible "advance man" for party leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

His slaying, and that of four other young MDC leaders in the past 10 days, is widely believed to be the work of pro-government forces that have launched a ruthless campaign to cripple the opposition as it tries to prepare for a runoff presidential vote on June 27.

Mr. Tsvangirai is to return to Zimbabwe today, despite threats to his safety, in part because he is determined to attend Mr. Ndira's funeral. However, it is not yet clear that the government will allow the funeral, scheduled for today, to go ahead.

>From the time he was a child, Mr. Ndira stood up against the abuse of power. Girls who went to school with him remember him for intervening when boys taunted them. He abhorred violence. "He would say, 'We are not fighting people, but the system,'" Mr. Tichareva said.

Mr. Ndira had been in hiding since a wave of state-sponsored violence began after it became clear that Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party had lost the March 29 election, for the first time since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.

His family at first sought safety in rural areas, but when the violence moved there, they came back to Mabvuku. Last Tuesday night, a worn-out Mr. Ndira sneaked home to see them.

Shortly after dawn, as he lay sleeping, six men in dark glasses burst into the house. One put a pistol to the head of Mr. Ndira's wife, Plaxedess Mutariswa, who was in the kitchen, and ordered her to be quiet and show them where her husband was.

Mr. Ndira awoke as they burst into the room, and for once, he did not go willingly. "One of them said, 'Let me hit him' and dragged him out of the room," Ms. Mutariswa said, weeping. "They started hitting him. He started screaming for help. As they were busy hitting him I tried to run for the door to call for help but I found another man with a gun on the door. He said, 'Just let a word out and I will blow your MDC head off.'" The men, believed to be agents of the Central Intelligence Organization, carried Mr. Ndira out to the car. His children Raphael, 10, and Linity, 7, watched from the doorway.

"They threw Tonderai into the car as he pleaded with the people around him to help save his life," Ms. Mutariswa said. She saw two of the men sit on her husband to keep him down inside the car as they drove off, saw another stuff a cloth into his mouth and blindfold him.

"When they took him, I could feel a shiver down my spine," said Ms. Mutariswa. "I have seen police coming to take him 35 times, but this time something in me told me that there was something very wrong."

The family tried without success for a week to get information from the authorities about where Mr. Ndira had been taken.

On Wednesday, a team from the MDC went to Harare's largest hospital to claim the bodies of a pair of activists from the mortuary. The staff person on duty told them there was another body, found on a farm outside the city, which had not been claimed and suggested they try to identify it.

It fell to Mr. Tichareva to do that job. "It was horrific: his face had been crushed and I could see a maggot on the left side. His left eye had been removed, his nose was damaged, his tongue was missing. He had two holes, one just below the ribcage and the other just near the heart. His body was black with bruises. The murderers had used his boxers to cover his face."

In fact, Mr. Tichareva, he would have been unable to say this body was his friend's, but for the bangle he always wore on his left hand.

Ms. Mutariswa, who lapsed frequently into racking sobs at the wake, described how, years ago, she tried to dissuade her husband from politics.

As she spoke, more than 100 people gathered outside the house, singing and drumming in what became one of the largest opposition gatherings since the election. Mr. Ndira's brothers emerged defiantly from hiding to attend; inside, their mother could only sit and keen.

While those who gathered in Mabvuku for his wake yesterday vowed to fight on in his name, they also said they didn't know how they could carry on without his leadership. "We can only say we will try, but I don't think we can match that level where Tonderai had taken this to," Mr. Tichareva said.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP