Zimondi plunders prisons
From The Zimbabwean – 20 January 2010
HARARE -Prisons commissioner Paradzayi Zimondi (Pictured) has transformed the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) into a quasi-military corps, running the correctional service as his personal fiefdom, disgruntled prison officers told The Zimbabwean this week..
They recounted how Zimondi had transmogrified the prison service from its duty to provide correctional services into a full military wing.
Sources revealed systematic plunder of the prison service by the commissioner, and how State resources had been diverted to bankroll Zimondi’s myriad personal enterprises.
Officers said food had been allegedly seized from prisons, leaving prisoners in despair.
After the March 2008 harmonised poll, prison officers recalled how Zimondi seized 100 cattle and 10 horses from Chikurubi Farm, and transferred all prison pigs to his farm. He is said to have brought famished cattle in to replace the heifers he allegedly looted.
Zimondi would seize milk and fresh produce from the farm prison and take it to his restaurant in Ruwa, called Plaka.
“He took building materials from the ZPS stores and built a dairy at his farm in Bromley,” said one officer. “Builders, electricians, carpenters were made to do the work. He built houses in Harare. I worked on some of the projects. We built a house in Milton Park, renovated one in Gunhill, and built a house for the (Justice and legal Affairs) permanent secretary, David Mangota in Donnybrooke using government materials stolen from the ZPS stores,” he said.
Other equipment was also said to have been taken to Zimondi’s two other farms in Shamva and Bindura. There are unconfirmed reports that he co-owns a banana plantation with police commissioner-general Augustine Chihuri.
It was further alleged Zimondi had properties in Kariba, where he is involved in a poaching ring slaughtering elephants for ivory. To over up the tracks, the meat is given to prisoners, but most of the time it is going bad. “He uses prison vehicles to transport the bodies of elephants,” said the officer. “Prison vehicles are not searched at roadblocks, making easy passage.”
Poaching
The poaching was said to be taking place in Gonarezhou and Hwange. The Zimbabwean heard that these activities had been going on since April 2009.
“He has also built a church in Murehwa using prison materials,” another source said.
Officers say that as far back as 1999, Zimondi established a military police branch at the ZPS. From 2001, he brought in soldiers from the Zimbabwe National Army to head all prison departments at the expense of experienced officers, who were forced into early retirement or moved from headquarters to work in prisons.
These military personnel include commissioners Ndlovu, Chihobvu – head of security; Kanonge – finance; Dube – construction, Maredza – projects and Ndebele – quartermaster.
Officers spoke exclusively to this newspaper about the purge of the prison service by Zimondi over the past decade, recounting in meticulous detail harassment and torture of officers suspected of being sympathetic to the MDC.
“From 2000, Zimondi controlled the ZPS cruelly. When Zanu (PF) lost to the MDC (in 2000), Zimondi formed the prisons military police to control and suppress MDC sympathisers in the ZPS. Torture of officers began. When Tendai Biti won the Harare East (constituency) in 2000, he held a celebration rally at Gletwyn Farm near Chikurubi. Officers who attended the rally were arrested and tortured. Some were discharged from their duties. The case was brought before the Rotten Row Magistrates Court. The perpetrators were found innocent and went back to work.”
The tortured officers were named as Shepherd Yuda, Andew Mabidi, Officer Njiri, Officer Bvunzawabaya and Officer Masarakufa, who has sine left the prison service and is now an MDC-T councillor in Mhondoro.
The situation worsened dramatically during the run-up to the sham June 27, 2008 run-off polls. At the heart of Zimondi’s terror campaign were asst commissioner Pambai, the officer-in-charge at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, the chief superintendent, the superintendent, principal prison officer (PPO), Gavhu, PPO Ndebele, prison officer Choto, prison officer Gonzo, prison officer Moffat, Makurudzo, PPO Malunga, prison officer Nyakahembe, PPO Ngulube.
A security department, allegedly manned by central intelligence organisation operatives Makurudzo, Mthombeni and Nyakahembe masquerading as prison officer, was formed. Efforts to obtain comment from Zimondi were futile at the time of going to print. The ZPS public relations requested written questions, which have been submitted.
Prisons chief behind Mutsekwa accident
From The Zimbabwe Telegraph – By Rumbi Mundimba, 20th April, 2009
The commissioner of prisons Paradzai Zimondi has been fingered as a proponent cum-cog of the elimination axis that also targets co-Home Affairs Minister Giles Mutsekwa amid revelations that the recent Marondera road mishap that befell the minister was pay back for his earlier “outbursts” that he was eager to clip the wings of the former member of the notorious Joint Operation Command (JOC) as he was a stumbling block to national healing, Zimbabwe Telegraph has heard.
Following Mutsekwa’s public announcement that he wanted to tame Zimondi, other members of JOC notoriously known as the junta joined in the silent and subtle war and elevated his name to the top of the elimination list before he pounced his claws on their fellow soldier of misfortune.
Mutsekwa is included in the elimination list of senior MDC officials that include Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Vice Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe, Finance Minister Tendai Biti, among others.
A family member of the Mutsekwa stable has since said that the accident that befell the co-home affairs minister was suspicious.
Mutsekwa was alone in his official Mercedes Benz when the near-tragedy occurred.
Mutsekwa was not reachable for comment by the time of going to print. He is however credited for having facilitated for the freedom of human rights director Jestina Mukoko while his fellow co-home affairs minister Kembo Mohadi was in Zambia.
The powers of the Junta were partially clipped following Robert Mugabe’s signature of the national security council bill which created the National Security Council .
Meanwhile a political commentator has said that the all-inclusive government was heading for a brick-wall as ZANU PF has mooted a plan to express its sincerity for only a year and would change its game plan in the second half of the all-inclusive arrangement.
The second half of the all-inclusive government would be used as a build up of the campaign of retribution against the MDC and other perceived enemies of the state*
My sincere apologies to Roy Bennett
From The Zimbabwe Times – By Sibangani Sibanda, April 8, 2009
MORGAN Tsvangirayi, Tendai Biti and various other members of the former opposition movement in Zimbabwe, which is now part of the inclusive government, have spent time as enforced guests of the Zimbabwean prison system.
One must assume, therefore, that they have experienced first hand, the current conditions in our prisons. One assumes because, to the best of my knowledge, they have not disclosed, in public at least, the conditions under which they were incarcerated for various lengths of time.
When Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) treasurer and deputy Agriculture Minister designate, Roy Bennett, finally walked out of prison last month, he used an expression that has become something of a cliché. He said that he would not wish time in a Zimbabwean prison on his worst enemy.
I must admit that although I sympathized with the man, there was a part of me that thought that these were the sentiments of a white Zimbabwean failing to come to terms with the realities of prison system that thousands, including his own colleagues in the MDC, have endured in silence.
I owe Mr Bennett an apology.
This week, a South African Television channel ran a program on conditions in Zimbabwean prisons based, in part, on Bennett’s experiences. It was sobering and frightening, bringing into our homes, images that I would normally associate with black and white photographs of victims of the Holocaust and television pictures of the Ethiopian famine!
Even taking into account Zanu-PF’s grim record in government, this looked particularly horrific. Yes, they massacred people in Matebeleland in the name of flushing out dissidents. They have routinely abducted, tortured and killed opponents. They have allowed facilities that were once some of the best on the continent to deteriorate to a level where they are a danger to their supposed beneficiaries.
In short, they have been a callous, unfeeling, uncaring government. But to see live human beings living in the conditions that Zimbabwean saw in that documentary was beyond anything that I could have imagined in my county, in the 21st Century!
Now I seriously doubt Bennett will ever be sworn in as deputy minister.
It brought my opinion of Zanu-PF to a new low. Yet I was not completely surprised by this new revelation of the cruelty of a party that has always thrived on the total oppression of its people. What I found frightening was the fact that there had been so much silence on such serious violations of basic human rights at our very door step.
Prison officers who have presided over these death camps have remained silent, even when they have had to preserve the corpses of dead prisoners by covering them with sand onto which they pour water (as was described in the program); they have remained silent when there has not been enough food for the prisoners; doctors who have gone to prisons to attend to patients have said nothing. Even those close to prisoners have remained silent when their relatives have shown signs of emaciation or even told them (as they must have done) of the conditions they were living in.
Commissioner of Prisons, Paradzai Zimondi, has presided over this death and decay with such remarkable hard-heartedness that he thought nothing of dressing a few luck prisoners in bright yellow uniforms – all brand new – to go and sing “Happy 85th Birthday” to President Mugabe in Chinhoyi. At least they had more than a square meal on that day as compensation for the indignity. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa had the audacity to suggest the emaciated figures appearing on TV screens last week were citizens of another African country.
Many almost believed them. The scenes depicted were just too terrible to be out of Zimbabwe.
And the politicians who have experienced the prison conditions for themselves have also remained silent. It is as if in Zimbabwe, nothing is too appalling. We accept whatever the government throws at us without question – as long as we are in situations that are less appalling.
Zanu-PF, if they were to be asked to account for the state of our prisons would probably blame “sanctions”, but I wonder if they will ever get asked now; now that they are part of a new “inclusive” government. In any case, what sanctions have been imposed on Zimbabwe that would account for such human suffering?
The MDC, who have the majority in Parliament but are the junior partner in the inclusive government have allowed themselves to become partly responsible for the state of our prisons – as they have allowed themselves to be identified with just about every failure of Zanu-PF. They, at least appear to still have some consciences. As they look at redressing all the other messes created by the old government, they should also look at the prisons.
Even those that society wishes to punish have some rights.
