REBECCA Masawi (68), a Harare woman who made headlines a
fortnight ago after she was arraigned for allegedly kidnapping and murdering
her love rival. It has emerged she was convicted of similar offences in the
1990s following the kidnap and murder of Marceline Dzumbira.
Masawi is accused of paying her accomplices Zvikomborero
Zvikoni (25), Liberty Guruve (31) and Tendai Dhai (32), to attack two women
whom she suspected of having an affair with her lover.
Investigations by The Sunday Mail have shown that this is
not the first time Masawi has resorted to crime to deal with her rivals.
In 1994, Masawi and her brother Kenneth were convicted of
the murder of a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe supervisor Marceline Dzumbira whom
Masawi suspected of having an affair with her husband Mr Cephas Chiparura.
Dzumbira was kidnapped in Harare’s Bluff Hill area on
December 15, 1993, while on her way to work by Kenneth and three other
accomplices paid by Masawi.
The victim, who was in the company of her mother and her
15-year-old daughter when she was kidnapped, was never seen again.
It was alleged that Rebecca, after making several threats
to Dzumbira, supplied her brother Kenneth with an Isuzu truck and instructed
him to kidnap her.
Armed with a pistol, Kenneth, who was in the company of
three other men, allegedly waited for Dzumbira just outside her gate and
bundled her into the truck.
The Herald of December 22, 1993, reported that Dzumbira was
abducted “mafia-style” while waiting to board a bus to work.
“One of the car’s doors was quickly opened and the two men
pulled the woman inside, slammed the door and drove off at high speed,” it was
reported. Dzumbira was eventually
presumed dead by both the High Court and the Supreme Court.
Although her body was never found, High Court Judge Justice
David Bartlett said there was sufficient circumstantial evidence for a murder
charge.
Sitting with assessors Mr Charles Hobley and Charles
Madega, Justice Bartlett convicted Masawi and Kenneth after finding that they
had lied throughout the case. The duo
was subsequently sentenced to death on May 27, 1994.
In handing down the sentence, the court found that there
had been a kidnap and murder of the missing person, which clearly showed an
actual intent to kill.
Despite the conviction, Masawi served less than four years
in jail before she was released on amnesty. Her luck came after her charge was
reduced to that of kidnapping by the Supreme Court in 1996.
The court altered her sentence to a 15-year jail term while
her brother Kenneth was acquitted of all the charges.
Masawi then benefited from the 1996 General Amnesty granted
to prisoners serving for non-specified offences.
She was released on August 25, 2000, after a third of her sentence was rescinded on good behaviour.
Commenting on her release, the then Zimbabwe Prison
Services spokesperson, Chief Prison Officer Frankie Meki said Masawi benefited
from the amnesty because her offence of kidnapping was not a specified crime in
terms of Clemency Order No 1 of 1996.
The Supreme Court in its ruling, although accepting that
she had been involved in kidnapping Dzumbira, found that there was no evidence
linking her with the actual act of the killing.
The Supreme Court concluded that there was no proof beyond
reasonable doubt as to how Dzumbira met her death.
However, in Masawi’s current charges, the allegations are
that on July 31 at around 11pm, the accused’s accomplices approached the
complainant Diana Dzuranyama at number 312 Ushewokunze where they purported to
be police officers to lure her to open the door.
One of the accused persons was putting on ZRP brown combat boots which he showed to the complainant as proof that they were police officers. They grabbed her and force-marched her into their get-away motor vehicle while some of them got into her house and stole a 3kg gas tank, eight litres of cooking oil and some personal documents.
They proceeded to number 344 Ushewokunze where they also
purported to be police officers to lure the now deceased Beatrice Makiwa into
opening the door.
They grabbed and dragged her into their motor vehicle while
others went into her house and stole cash amounting to US$600 and other
valuables.
The accused covered the now deceased and the complainant’s
faces with scarfs and drove to a secluded bushy area near Lake Chivero. On
arrival, the accused assaulted the victims with iron bars all over their bodies
and dumped them.
The two victims were later rescued by passers-by who saw
them and promptly called the police.
The police took the two women to the Parirenyatwa Group of
Hospitals before they were referred to Chitungwiza General Hospital where one
of them was operated on and discharged on August 3, 2020.
Beatrice passed on due to the injuries sustained during the
brutal attack. More than a month later, things unravelled for the gang when the
police discovered that Zvikoni was using the dead woman’s mobile phone.
He was arrested on September 26. After questioning, he
implicated Guruve and Dhai in the crime and said they had been hired by Masawi.
She was not asked to plead was remanded in custody to
October 13. Sunday Mail
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