by Christopher Makaza

Zimbabwe today hosts the virtual meeting of the Ministerial Committee of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation which, to no surprise, has coincided with a fresh abduction claim by MDC-A Harare Ward 16 Councillor, Denford Ngadziore. The councillor yesterday claimed that his wife and six months old baby were reportedly abducted by suspected state security agents.

Posting on his Twitter handle Ngadziore made unsubstantiated claims of State brutality and the alleged abduction.

 “The State continues with its brutality against the citizenry. This evening, they abducted and tortured my wife with her six months old baby strapped on her back,” Ngadziore tweeted.

Relatedly, posting on its official Twitter handle, the MDC-Alliance further claimed that other MDC-A members abducted together with Ngadziore`s wife at their home in Mabelreign included Allan Moyo and Snaga Lameck.

History has shown that the MDC-Alliance’s alleged abductions are systematically faked and timed to coincide with international events to put Zimbabwe on the global agenda. This was reiterated by Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Dr Sibusiso Moyo in May, this year, after the alleged abduction of the three MDC-A female activists.

“Although the government has refrained from drawing its own hasty conclusions, it is difficult to ignore the glaring similarities which exist between this recent alleged incident and several such allegations in the past, which have all borne similar hallmarks of stage-managed theatre designed to soil the image of the government and indeed the nation and to divert attention from the ongoing implosion and ever-shifting allegiances within some political formations in the opposition,” Dr Moyo said.

Ngadziore`s abduction claims came just over a month after MDC officials, Joana Mamombe, Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova also claimed abduction and torture which Minister Moyo said at the time coincided with “the SADC Troika summit and the presence in Harare of several regional Heads of State and the impending SADC Council Ministers virtual meeting.”

The alleged abduction of former Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA) acting president, Doctor Peter Magombeyi’s in September last year was another move that was calculated to tarnish Government and President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s images ahead of the United Nations General Assembly which the President was set to attend in New York that month.

Exposing Magombeyi’s fake abduction, former high ranking MDC-A official Mr Tapiwa Mashakada, last week gave stunning details on how the alleged abduction of Dr Magombeyi in September last year, was in fact, stage-managed by the attention-seeking MDC-Alliance working in cahoots with the American Embassy to malign the image of the new dispensation.

Political analyst Mr Shakemore Muzanenhamo has criticised the MDC-Alliance for using dirty political tricks in its vain attempts to unseat ZANU PF.

“Since its formation in 1999, the MDC has brought untold suffering on the country including consorting with foreign nations to impose illegal sanctions on the country, so, this issue of abduction claims by MDC-A is also meant to justify the existence of sanctions in the country,” said Muzanenhamo.

Muzanenhamo noted that Ngadziore was a mere councillor whose threat to the nation was next to none and one would then wonder why he might be a target of the state security agents as he claimed.

Mamombe and company are currently under fire for allegedly faking their abduction and are being charged for publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the State. Preliminary results of the ongoing investigations by the police into the matter have so far revealed that the trio was never abducted and that they had stage managed the kidnapping.

The MDC-A continues to use abductions as a tool to tarnish the image of the Government by painting a picture that there is massive human rights abuse in the country. The dirty political tricks are all part of efforts to unseat the ZANU PF government through inciting an uprising.