MP asks government to declare Itai Dzamara dead to enable family to move on

Kambuzuma Member of Parliament Willias Madzimure yesterday said Home Affairs Minister Cain Mathema should declare activist Itai Dzamara dead so that the family can put the issue to closure if he is not making any progress into the investigation on his disappearance.

Dzamara disappeared on 9 March 2015 and has not been heard of since.

Dzamara is a former journalist who turned into a political activist after forming the Occupy Africa Unity Square group to force then President Robert Mugabe to step down.

He was abducted when he went to have a hair cut in his home suburb of Glen Norah.

Madzimure told Parliament yesterday: “It is more than five years (actually four years) since the disappearance of Itai Dzamara and it is also more than five months since the Minister promised this House that he was going to give us an update.

“It is enshrined in our Constitution that a person has a right to life and to protection but we also have got provisions in our statutes that deal with missing people.

“The family has been going through terrible times and I think it is now high time that the Minister comes to this House and report on the investigations.  If there is need for him to declare Itai Dzamara dead, then he does that so that the family can put this issue to closure.”

Deputy Speaker Tsitsi Gezi said Parliament will ask the minister to give an investigation report on the matter but did not say when.

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