News / National
Zanu-PF violence changes Gutu man's life forever
12 Aug 2024 at 15:40hrs | Views
He was an energetic man, running his own life and fending for his family. He loved and embraced the supposed freedom brought by the country's liberators hence multi-partyism was just one of those fruits of independence.
Takaendesa Chisese joined MDC and was one of the party's first members in 1999, rising to the level of a ward organiser. He also contested as a councillor.
On a quiet morning in 2008, his liberators showed him their true colours.
"Zanu-PF went to war to get power for itself and not for the people. Zanu-PF has nothing to do with the people but to use the people to its own end", says Chisese dropping one word after another as he tries to put his thoughts into a coherent statement.
He goes blank, gets disjointed and picks up a totally different subject.
At around 5am that morning Chisese was disturbed by what sounded like 100 horsemen advancing on his homestead. Some 200 Zanu-PF youth drawn from wards 19, 21 and 40 in Gutu Central had surrounded his yard but before he could open the door, it was banged loose and his bedroom turned into a slaughter house.
Youth with logs, stones and bricks rained them on him. He fell to the ground and was pulled outside the house. The late Zanu-PF president, Robert Mugabe once said that his party has degrees in violence and this is one example.
Chisese, a mere villager without any weapon in his hands was mercilessly battered until he was unconscious. His house is 4km from the current Zanu-PF MP Winton Chitando's rural home.
The same fate met his wife who was preparing food for school kids in a kitchen 10 metres away. The wife would however, not go down without a fight. She picked up a hammer and hit one of the youths on the cheek and he fell down. The other youths momentarily ran away but came back at the innocent woman more ferociously.
They threw whatever they had on her until she was subdued. Chisese's brother and his daughters-in-law were also heavily assaulted.
Most terror gang leaders of that June 2008 attack are now dead. Notorious names like Rugwara, Maravanyika and Chipangura Border Zengeya still send chills down villagers' spines, according to Peter Runesu who at the time escaped violence and stayed in Bikita.
Beaten to pulp, the rowdy group placed Chisese into a wheelbarrow and pushed him to Gonye Business Center where Zanu-PF had set up a torture camp to deal with any known opposition supporters.
The camp was a horror scene where war veterans, the supposed liberators of the people sat on chairs, watched and commanded youth to torture captured opposition members. Victims were made to lie down and flogged in public. Logs, whips and sticks were used to beat people.
Victims were also made to roll in the mud in that chilly, June weather. The torturers' food supplies came from mealie-meal chicken, goats and cattle stolen from opposition supporters.
The perpetrators of this violence and the stock thieves are known but Zimbabwe Republic Police has not arrested anyone to this day.
For Zanu-PF, the right to human dignity does not exist for the poor rural folk. They are political fodder and the most humiliated were teachers who were flogged by their former pupils.
The second reason why Chisese's almost lifeless body had to be taken to the business centre was to display to the community what Zanu-PF does to people who hold different opinions from it. The youth continued to assault an unconscious man until a brave former Police Officer only identified as Gono confronted and told them that the man they still flogged was just as good as dead.
Almost lifeless, Chisese was taken by Police to Gutu Mission Hospital where he spent three days with no treatment except getting pain killers. Now mentally deranged, Chisese was discharged, put on a bus with instructions that he be dropped home, some 15km from Gutu Mission. He got lost and ended up in Bikita which is in the opposite direction and 100km away.
The family had to get means to get him back.
What started as a process to merely exercise one's right to choose a leader of his choice turned into a catastrophe for the Chisese family.
Chisese returned from hospital a cabbage. He could not connect today, tomorrow and yesterday. He hardly recognises family members. He doesn't know where he is, what he is doing or whether he has had a meal.
This has been his life for the past 16 years; wholly dependent on others.
His family was thrown into an abyss of poverty; living from hand to mouth and kids had to drop out of school because there was no money for school fees.
Chisese himself needed massive medical attention from scans of the brain, the chest and other areas. He needs medicine to alleviate pain that he goes through daily because of the injuries but there is nothing that was ever provided.
He is among thousands of people maimed or killed in 2008 when President Mugabe rejected elections results on the advice of his then chief adviser, Emmerson Mnangagwa and ordered a bloody rerun described by South African military commanders as horrifying.
ZNA Commander, Lt General Nhamo Anselem Sanyatwe recently threatened another siege on the rural populace. The General must be reminded that the objective of the liberation war that he so tenaciously fought was to restore his people's trampled self-esteem, to give them freedom to choose and the right to vote for a person of their choice.
Gen Sanyatwe fought the liberation war to bring protection to his people. If Gen Senyatwe goes against this, it means he lost the war of liberation because he has failed to deliver the people what he fought to give. He must pause, introspect and understand that the very people that they torment are their kith and kin.
If ZNA torments Zimbabweans, which Army will protect them?
Chisese is a now a disabled man, and despite his situation there is not a day in the last 16 years that a Department of Social Welfare official or anyone from Government has set foot on his homestead to look into his situation. The wife struggles alone.
"Zanu-PF turned our lives upside down. Our father was able to send us to school, to buy us clothes and give us food. Our family is an example to the locals of what Zanu-PF stands for and can do to the opposition. When people here talk of Zanu-PF's violence, they give our family as an example. Zanu-PF is a party of cruel men and women who cling to power through coercion," said Takaidzwa Chisese who is Chisese's son.
Takaidzwa appealed to well-wishers to support his father with money for medicines and medical reviews. He also appealed for money for his welfare.
Takaendesa Chisese joined MDC and was one of the party's first members in 1999, rising to the level of a ward organiser. He also contested as a councillor.
On a quiet morning in 2008, his liberators showed him their true colours.
"Zanu-PF went to war to get power for itself and not for the people. Zanu-PF has nothing to do with the people but to use the people to its own end", says Chisese dropping one word after another as he tries to put his thoughts into a coherent statement.
He goes blank, gets disjointed and picks up a totally different subject.
At around 5am that morning Chisese was disturbed by what sounded like 100 horsemen advancing on his homestead. Some 200 Zanu-PF youth drawn from wards 19, 21 and 40 in Gutu Central had surrounded his yard but before he could open the door, it was banged loose and his bedroom turned into a slaughter house.
Youth with logs, stones and bricks rained them on him. He fell to the ground and was pulled outside the house. The late Zanu-PF president, Robert Mugabe once said that his party has degrees in violence and this is one example.
Chisese, a mere villager without any weapon in his hands was mercilessly battered until he was unconscious. His house is 4km from the current Zanu-PF MP Winton Chitando's rural home.
The same fate met his wife who was preparing food for school kids in a kitchen 10 metres away. The wife would however, not go down without a fight. She picked up a hammer and hit one of the youths on the cheek and he fell down. The other youths momentarily ran away but came back at the innocent woman more ferociously.
They threw whatever they had on her until she was subdued. Chisese's brother and his daughters-in-law were also heavily assaulted.
Most terror gang leaders of that June 2008 attack are now dead. Notorious names like Rugwara, Maravanyika and Chipangura Border Zengeya still send chills down villagers' spines, according to Peter Runesu who at the time escaped violence and stayed in Bikita.
Beaten to pulp, the rowdy group placed Chisese into a wheelbarrow and pushed him to Gonye Business Center where Zanu-PF had set up a torture camp to deal with any known opposition supporters.
The camp was a horror scene where war veterans, the supposed liberators of the people sat on chairs, watched and commanded youth to torture captured opposition members. Victims were made to lie down and flogged in public. Logs, whips and sticks were used to beat people.
Victims were also made to roll in the mud in that chilly, June weather. The torturers' food supplies came from mealie-meal chicken, goats and cattle stolen from opposition supporters.
For Zanu-PF, the right to human dignity does not exist for the poor rural folk. They are political fodder and the most humiliated were teachers who were flogged by their former pupils.
The second reason why Chisese's almost lifeless body had to be taken to the business centre was to display to the community what Zanu-PF does to people who hold different opinions from it. The youth continued to assault an unconscious man until a brave former Police Officer only identified as Gono confronted and told them that the man they still flogged was just as good as dead.
Almost lifeless, Chisese was taken by Police to Gutu Mission Hospital where he spent three days with no treatment except getting pain killers. Now mentally deranged, Chisese was discharged, put on a bus with instructions that he be dropped home, some 15km from Gutu Mission. He got lost and ended up in Bikita which is in the opposite direction and 100km away.
The family had to get means to get him back.
What started as a process to merely exercise one's right to choose a leader of his choice turned into a catastrophe for the Chisese family.
Chisese returned from hospital a cabbage. He could not connect today, tomorrow and yesterday. He hardly recognises family members. He doesn't know where he is, what he is doing or whether he has had a meal.
This has been his life for the past 16 years; wholly dependent on others.
His family was thrown into an abyss of poverty; living from hand to mouth and kids had to drop out of school because there was no money for school fees.
Chisese himself needed massive medical attention from scans of the brain, the chest and other areas. He needs medicine to alleviate pain that he goes through daily because of the injuries but there is nothing that was ever provided.
He is among thousands of people maimed or killed in 2008 when President Mugabe rejected elections results on the advice of his then chief adviser, Emmerson Mnangagwa and ordered a bloody rerun described by South African military commanders as horrifying.
ZNA Commander, Lt General Nhamo Anselem Sanyatwe recently threatened another siege on the rural populace. The General must be reminded that the objective of the liberation war that he so tenaciously fought was to restore his people's trampled self-esteem, to give them freedom to choose and the right to vote for a person of their choice.
Gen Sanyatwe fought the liberation war to bring protection to his people. If Gen Senyatwe goes against this, it means he lost the war of liberation because he has failed to deliver the people what he fought to give. He must pause, introspect and understand that the very people that they torment are their kith and kin.
If ZNA torments Zimbabweans, which Army will protect them?
Chisese is a now a disabled man, and despite his situation there is not a day in the last 16 years that a Department of Social Welfare official or anyone from Government has set foot on his homestead to look into his situation. The wife struggles alone.
"Zanu-PF turned our lives upside down. Our father was able to send us to school, to buy us clothes and give us food. Our family is an example to the locals of what Zanu-PF stands for and can do to the opposition. When people here talk of Zanu-PF's violence, they give our family as an example. Zanu-PF is a party of cruel men and women who cling to power through coercion," said Takaidzwa Chisese who is Chisese's son.
Takaidzwa appealed to well-wishers to support his father with money for medicines and medical reviews. He also appealed for money for his welfare.
Source - The Mirror
