CHIEF Njelele has been sucked into the case in which a 25-year-old Gokwe woman disappeared in 2019 after she was allegedly lured to South Africa by her boyfriend.
The chief, born Misheck Njelele allegedly forced the family
of the woman, Tarisai Maimba to accept some clothes allegedly belonging to her,
claiming she was dead.
Maimba’s mother, Annamaria Mafuvadze had filed a missing
person report at Gokwe Police Station under RRB 5022624 on January 2 this year.
The matter is still pending with Maimba not confirmed dead.
According to Mafuvadze, her daughter was lured by her
boyfriend Danwell Muchiiwa from Chief Njelele’s village to South Africa to look
for a job on October 19, 2019.
“I used to talk to her during her first days in South
Africa, but sometime later I did not have access to her with Muchiiwa now
responding to the calls and messages,” Mafuvadze said in an interview.
“What was surprising is that whenever I asked to talk to
her, Muchiiwa would say she is not in or give several other excuses and
contradictory statements.”
At one point, Muchiiwa claimed that he assisted Maimba to
travel back to Zimbabwe using the cross-border transporters commonly referred
to as Omalayitsha.
“After some time, I tried to convince him to tell us if she
was alive but Muchiiwa would not. He ended up telling me that my child was in
Mozambique. He gave me some phone numbers to contact people there, but we could
not understand each other because of the language barrier,” said Mafuvadze.
“We again called that number on March 29, the person was
talking in an Mozambican language, like broken Shona and the only thing we
could understand is that the person was saying my daughter died on March 27,
and was buried the following day.
“I then went to report Muchiiwa to Chief Njelele over my
missing daughter, and to ask the traditional leader to summon his family so
that they could convince their son to reveal the whereabouts of my daughter.”
Mafuvadze said she was surprised to learn that Chief
Njelele had summoned Muchiiwa’s family where they agreed that her daughter had
died in Mozambique, and that she must collect the clothes of her deceased child
or be charged.
“Chief Njelele told us that Muchiiwa paid a beast towards
her missing child but we only knew that when we contacted him. We suspect a
cover up,” Mafuvadze said.
When contacted for comment on Thursday, Chief Njelele asked
this reporter to call in 10 minutes.
But he was no longer responding to the calls since
Thursday. He also did not respond to messages sent via his mobile phone.
Upon contacting the Gokwe police on the progress of the
missing person report, Mafuvadze was told that the matter had been forwarded to
the Interpol.
But national police spokesperson assistant commissioner
Paul Nyathi could not confirm that Interpol was now involved in the case. Standard
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