Two WOZA members, including a 15 year-old girl, were arrested in Bulawayo on Saturday afternoon. They were held for two days by police before being released late last night with no charge.
It appears that ZANU PF members in the area had witnessed some people taking a bag into the house of a WOZA member. They alerted the police who waited outside the house as no one was home. When one of the women went to the house to ask for salt, she was arrested by the four plain-clothed police officers who accused her of being a WOZA member. When the 15-year-old daughter of the house arrived shortly afterwards, she was also arrested. Police then illegally entered the house and confiscated a bag of WOZA flyers.
When the older woman shouted to a neighbour that she was being arrested, she was hit by one of the police officers who told her to keep quiet and not tell anyone, as their being arrested ‘was a secret’. The two were then taken to Pumula Police Station where they were questioned about WOZA leaders, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, both who are currently in Chikurubi Women’s Prison. They were threatened with death if they did not answer the questions correctly. One police officer, a sergeant, also constantly demanded that the young girl have sex with him and threatened to have her sent to prison if she refused. She however continued to resist, saying that she would rather die in prison than get disease.
Both were questioned for several hours. The 15-year-old girl was finally released at 2am but was told to return to the police station in the morning. She was accompanied back to her house by two male police officers who continued to pressure her to sleep with them. The other woman was kept in the charge office at Pumula Police Station and made to sleep handcuffed to a pole, apparently because she was a high flight risk.
The questioning of both women continued in the morning. When a lawyer tried to gain access to them, he was turned away and told that he could not see his clients without the permission of Law and Order officers from Bulawayo Central Police Station. The two were taken to Bulawayo Central in the afternoon where they were questioned in the presence of their lawyer. Both were released around 7.30pm without charge and ordered not to tell anyone in their area that they had been set free.
Police went back to the neighbourhood in the afternoon however and searched the house of another woman whom they accused of being a WOZA member. They did not find any WOZA materials and left. They have threatened to search every house in the neighbourhood however as they say that the entire area is obviously WOZA.
Meanwhile, the trial of two other members, Trust Moyo and Cynthia Ncube, on charges of distributing materials likely to cause a breach of the peace, has been postponed to 8th July.
