Paradzai Zimondi

Date of Birth: 4 Mar 1947

Zimondi, the director  and Commissioner of the Zimbabwe Prisons Service, is also a retired senior airforce officer.

Together with Chihuri, Shiri and Chiwenga, he has made it clear that he will never salute a “sell-out”, referring to Tsvangirai.

Zimondi personally leads the campaigns for Mugabe in barracks and police camps, and is credited with creating a campaign to force army and police officials to support Mugabe in early postal ballots. The ballots were filled out in front of designated army and police superiors.

Told members of security agencies not supporting Mugabe they would be regarded as traitors and be rewarded with death.

After retiring from the armed forces, Gen Zimondi was kept in the state’s security apparatus with a post running the prisons service. A trusted officer, he is believed to be especially close to Mr Mugabe.

Before the election’s first round, Gen Zimondi told a gathering of prison officers:

“I am giving you an order to vote for the President”, adding: “I will only support the leadership of President Mugabe.”

Info from credible sources in the police and prison services, as well as from victims and eyewitnesses that Operation Makavhoterapapi was planned and orchestrated under the direction and command of the government’s Joint Operations Command (JOC).

Human Rights Watch (June 2008 report) also spoke to three officers from the Zimbabwe prison services who described the systematic deployment of senior prison officers to various provinces to oversee Operation Makavhoterapapi, under the direct command of the JOC. According to the officers, at least five senior prison officers from Harare Central Prison were deployed to provinces in Mashonaland Central, Manicaland and Mashonaland East in the weeks after the March 29 elections.

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Zimondi is on the list of US and EU targeted sanctions