Missing Joshua Bakacheza's decomposing body found
The body of missing Joshua Bakacheza, MDC driver for Mashonaland West was discovered late on Saturday the 5th of July 2008, decomposing in a secluded bushy area on a farm in Beatrice, some 30 km out of Harare, two weeks after his abduction and disappearance by suspected state security agents. Bakacheza was abducted on the afternoon of June 25 in Msasa, Harare, together with another MDC activist, Tendai Chidziwo while assisting murdered MDC activist, Tonderai Ndira's wife to move her furniture and personal belongings to another residential area where she had sought accommodation after complaining that she no longer felt safe at her home in Mabvuku, a sprawling township area on the outskirts of Harare along the Harare - Mutare highway.
Three unmarked double cab trucks ambushed them, movie style, one in front, one from behind and the other on the left hand side, forcing them to stop and 16 men armed with AK assault rifles disembarked. They then hijacked the MDC truck loaded with the furniture and drove Tendai and Joshua to Beatrice, leaving Tonderai's widow and her two children standing by the roadside, trembling from fright and crying. Once there they tortured the two, asking questions relating to their involvement in the MDC and then shot them both. Joshua was shot 3 times and Tendai was shot once on the right side of the head and their assailants left them for dead. Tendai miraculously managed to survive the shooting and dragged him self for about fifty meters from the scene, to a nearby gravel road that joins the main Harare - Masvingo highway, about 6 km away. A Good Samaritan assisted him to Beatrice and then Harare after finding him in a state of unconsciousness.
Once in Harare he was admitted into the Intensive Care Unit of a local clinic where he remained in a coma for close to a week. Once awake, Tendai Chidziwo gave information as to where his fellow comrade's body could be found leading to its discovery after a 2 week desperate search by family members and work mates from the MDC's Mashonaland West Provincial Offices. The search had covered all of Harare's hospitals and mortuaries and police stations including outlying areas.
State security agents tortured, then murdered Ndira, MDC National Youth Assembly secretary for security after they kidnapped him at his home in Mabvuku, Harare on the 21st of May 2008. Abductions, murders and violence against perceived MDC members continue countrywide, more two weeks after the rigged one man election. The whereabouts of hundreds of kidnapped MDC personnel remains unknown.
This is just a single example of all the violence carried out by state security agents that is worsening in Zimbabwe as part of the plan by Mugabe and the military junta to eliminate the MDC completely.
Statement issued by the Movement for Democratic Change July 7 2008
