Former foreign affairs minister Walter Mzembi has written a statement addressed to Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders over the detention female student Nicole Chabata.
Mzembi bemoans SADC leaders’ neglect of the girl’s plight: He writes…
SADC Presidents came for the 44th Summit and left this minor Nicole Chabata incarcerated in the notorious adult Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, they have met at least once after that most recently with President Mnangagwa at the FOCAC meeting in China, still no check on whether Nicole was eventually released to prepare for her “O” level Exams, let alone the rest of the detainees locked up ironically on the Day of African Child commemorated on the 16th of June to mark the brutal felling of students in Soweto by the Apartheid Regime.
Amongst the Presidents was the Tanzanian President Suluhu Samia, a mother and matriarch figure in the male dominated club who should be checking and following up with her newly ordained brother Chairman of @SADC_News on the condition of this girl child whom she left holed up in an infamous adult prison.
Many Presidents who went on a guided tour of our beautiful Zimbabwe including @OfficialMasisi who was ‘flabbergasted ‘and awed by Precabe Farm the President’s seven star agrarian retreat also forgot to put in a word for this child.
Our Founding Fathers of SADC, themselves past Frontline States Presidents would have asked for a Prison tour knowing their liberation credentials & mindset as we all do with some of them having spent 27 years in Prison like Nelson Mandela @CyrilRamaphosa’s mentor.
Cyril is probably too busy trying to balance things in his “historical” GNU to worry about some girl he left in this dingy prison afterall he wants 1 million of these illegal Zimbabweans out of sight soonest.
President @edmnangagwa did 10 years so the story of how Prison hardens a minor’s mind is not new to him, he himself is infamously accredited for being “unforgiving” because of what jail did to him as a minor in an adult prison from which he escaped the gallows by a whisker. Talk about
“unforgiveness” some of us have lived it in exile for 7 years!
So what happened to empathy and brotherhood in this SADC Club let alone peer review? Nicole deserves the fullness of her childhood stolen by prison and by adults who should know better.
Maiguru @ZimFirstLady mudzimai wenhaka muripi? I heard you say some mature stuff and counsel to a London Reporter last night, stand up for this girl please ndapota.
Tatenda…
