Today marks six years after Dzamara’s disappearance.
Dzamara was a well-known activist and fierce critic of the late former
President Robert Mugabe.
He disappeared on March 9 in 2015, after he went for a
haircut in Glen View high-density suburb in Harare.
Sheffra told NewsDay that six years on, she was still
seeking closure to what happened to her husband, adding that she would not stop
appealing to the authorities to intervene and intensify investigations to
establish his whereabouts.
“I have always been making the same requests for the past
six years to government authorities. Even if I meet President Mnagagwa today, I
will still make the same request. I pray for his intervention. If President
Mnangagwa wishes, even before day-end today, we would know what happened to
Itai,” Sheffra said. “For the sake of his two minor children, we just plead for
Mnangagwa’s intervention so that we locate him.”
She said since her husband disappeared, she had not
received any updates on the investigations.
“I haven’t received any information as yet on any further
probe on Itai’s disappearance from the government, despite calls for
authorities to find him. Since his disappearance, family members have been
taking care of his two children.
“We are also depending on well-wishers for our daily
upkeep. Life has changed a lot for the three of us as we have to adapt to
surviving without the head of the family. However, I hope that one day I will
know what really happened to him. That hope keeps me going,” she said.
Last year, Sheffra submitted a petition at Mnangagwa’s
Munhumutapa offices requesting the government to act on her husband’s
disappearance.
Human rights organisations have been calling on the
government to set up an independent commission of inquiry to dig into the
circumstances around the abduction of Dzamara.
In 2016, Mnangagwa, then Vice-President, told the United
Nations Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, Switzerland, that government was
actively pursuing the search for Itai.
Human rights defenders have also raised concern over
continued criminalisation of activism by the Zimbabwean government which has
resulted in arbitrary arrests, torture and harassment of government critics.
Newsday
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