Zimbabwe - Where's Itai Dzamara?

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2018

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On 9 March 2015, one of Zimbabwe's most prominent critics of the Mugabe government, Itai Dzamara, was abducted from a barber shop in broad daylight. He hasn't been seen since - and his body hasn’t been discovered. Adding to the mystery is a series of text messages sent to Itai's brother claiming Itai was taken to various locations, then killed, then buried and then exhumed before being dumped in a dam.

For Assignment, Kim Chakanetsa chronicles his forced disappearance and asks the new government how the people of Zimbabwe can ever trust that the days of disappearances are over unless this high-profile case is resolved.

Itai Dzamara came to the attention of the authorities in 2014 when he started a protest in Harare's Africa Unity Square and delivered in person a petition to the president's office. His demand was simple but blunt: go now Mugabe.

We retrace what happened; we find out more about Itai the man from his friends; we explore the impact of his disappearance on his wife and children; we hear from lawyers how the initial police investigation took them on a wild goose chase. We question the police on what's the latest on the investigation and ask government how it can hope to restore faith without telling the people of Zimbabwe where Itai is.

Producer: Penny Dale Editor: Penny Murphy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	A plane cut with the number one, that's one. Yeah.
0:05.0	Number one. Yeah.
0:06.0	Right.
0:07.0	That's fine.
0:09.0	On the 9th of March 2015, a man in his mid 30s walked the short distance from his home on the
0:15.8	outskirts of Zimbabwe's capital Harare to this barber shop.
0:19.8	Yeah, that's a good size. Yeah, that's a good size.
0:23.0	He was a regular customer, and as he entered the small wooden structure, now painted red and green,
0:29.0	he greeted the barbers and sat down.
0:31.0	Minutes later, barbers and sat down.
0:34.3	Minutes later he was abducted in broad daylight,
0:38.4	taken from the barbers chair.
0:40.7	His name is Itaid Zamara, an outspoken critic of former President Robert Mugabe.
0:47.0	I'm Kim Chakaneta and for this BBC World Service assignment, I'll be piecing together the story of the disappearance of Itaid Zamara.
0:57.0	Let's go back to that March morning three years ago to speak to one of the last people to see Itai, his barber.
1:07.0	He didn't want to be interviewed in front of his customers and he asked that we not name him.
1:13.0	It I asked to get around the evening in us.
1:17.0	It I asked to get his beard cut,
1:20.0	so he sat in the baba chair and I put a tower around him and then a car went past across the road,
1:26.4	a white Nissan twin cape. We asked each other, me and another barber was also tending to a customer. We asked what is that car on the road.
1:35.5	Then itai said that you don't know de'va cumana.
1:39.1	What ita meant is that he believed the men driving up and down past the barber shop
	...

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