MDC Alliance Organising Hon. Amos Chibaya was yesterday involved in an accident as he was driving towards Zvishavane.
The driver of the other vehicle, a Central Intelligence Officer (CIO).It is reported that the CIO, Norman Kujoka’s car was stationary on the same road, and just made a U-turn in front of Chibaya and caused the crash.
This is not the first incident to happen, few days ago Marondera Central MP Caston Matewu was also involved in an accident, involving an unmarked vehicle believed to belong to a CIO operative.
Meanwhile, according to political watchers the dirty hands of Zimbabwean politics could be at play. Respected political commentator Dr Pedzisai Ruhanya says in Zimbabwe, accidents play a key role in politics. He adds that the target against MDC Organising Secretary Hon Amos Chibaya is not a mistake, but a well calculated move. “They know he organises the party, supporters and crunch time is waiting,” says Ruhanya. Ruhanya adds that the manner in which ZANU-PF political commissars have died through accidents should be understood in a broader sense. “Moven Mahachi, Border Gezi, Elliot Manyika all died in accidents.
“The accident involving MDC Organising Secretary Amos Chibaya must be understood in the bigger context of role of accidents in Zimbabwe politics. Beware MDC,” he warns. He says it is his hope that the system won’t try to clean its hands through attributing the incident to the current MDC feuds. “All those in the power struggles be very careful, extremely careful about what you do and what you say. The system is both dirty and murderous. “The system will manipulate these differences,” adds Dr Ruhanya.
Another analyst Alexander Chisveru says ZANU-PF has a well documented history of eliminating political opponents, even those from within through accidents. “The mystery deaths have generally occurred at times when ZANU-PF has been torn by factional conflict,” he says.
He concurs with Dr Ruhanya that, accidents plays a very critical role in the politics of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has had a number of questionable deaths, among them, Josiah Tongogara, Chris Ushewokunze, Zororo Duri and Paul Gunda among others. Most of these were allegedly eliminated for their political posture and liberal minds.
Meanwhile, In 2009 Enos Nkala, one of ZANU’s founders, claimed that Mahachi was eliminated because of his robust opposition to ZANU-PF’s looting of diamonds in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Zororo Duri’s case, it was reported that his political career was rising rapidly through ZANU-PF ranks as one of the young technocrats seen as poised to take over the party in the mid-1990s.
Party bosses at one point told him not to contest the chair of Manicaland province against Kumbirai Kangai, but he went ahead and won.
Appointed ambassador to Cuba, he was killed in a car accident on the Mutare-Harare road in 1996. Others were allegedly eliminated for differing with what the status quo deemed the correct political ideologies, while others were allegedly killed for posing a threat of succeeding the incumbent. “In ZANU-PF, harbouring ambitions to succeed the ‘big bosses’ was a treasonous offence, punishable by death,” says Chisveru.
While another politician, Edward Chindori–Chininga the then outspoken Guruve South MP was in June 2013 involved in a road accident that claimed his life. Chindori-Chininga was the vocal chairperson of a parliamentary committee that had just released a highly critical report on Zimbabwe’s diamond industry. Reports pointed out that his car, which veered off the road into a tree, had left no skid marks. Just before his death, it was believed he wanted to release a dossier to do with the looting of minerals, particularly diamonds.
In his study on political accidents in Zimbabwe, Joost Fontein from the department of anthropology at University of Johannesburg, concluded that political accidents in Zimbabwe were common and usually end in unresolved controversy amid rumours of assassinations.
