The President of the newly formed Citizens Coalition for Change, Advocate Nelson Chamisa has took to social media to remember former MDC activist who disappeared in 2015.
“9 MARCH 2015 is when Itai Dzamara was abducted. It’s now 7 years since he was abducted and has never been seen or accounted for.We hold the state accountable and demand answers.Itai was killed for demanding freedom.Our thoughts are with the Dzamara family.We the Citizens,” he posted.
Wearing a red Manchester United replica jersey with black shorts and sandals, prominent activist Itai Dzamara left his home to get a haircut at the neighbourhood barbershop in Glen View, a high-density suburb south of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
In a few minutes he would be back, he told his wife, whom he asked to prepare breakfast. Sheffra Dzamara did so and waited for him to return. But an hour later, a neighbour rushed to their house and delivered the devastating news – Itai had been taken.
According to Sheffra, unidentified men outside the barbershop accused her 35-year-old husband of livestock theft, seized him and bundled him into one of their unmarked pick-up trucks before speeding off.
That was six years ago, on March 9, 2015.
Itai has not been seen since that morning, and his whereabouts remain a mystery.
A former newspaper journalist and the founder of the Occupy Africa Unity Square movement calling for the resignation of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s longtime leader who died in 2019, Itai was a rising political star at the time of his abduction.
Just days earlier, he had told thousands of people at a rally in Harare that was organised by the late opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai that Zimbabweans should rise up against Mugabe.
Some believe Itai, who had a reputation for being extremely courageous in a country that had long been governed with an iron fist, could have been taken by state security agents.
