Body of an MDC activist murdered in 2009 still at Gokwe Hospital mortuary

The High Court murder trial of Farai Machaya, the son of Jason Machaya, the Zanu-PF Midlands chairperson and Midlands governor has been set for a hearing at Gokwe Centre on 12 September during the Gweru High Court circuit.

Farai Machaya is facing charges of murdering Moses Chokuda, an MDC-T activist, in Gokwe on 22 March 2009.

The body of Chokuda is still at Gokwe District Hospital's mortuary after his family said they would only bury him after the Machaya family had admitted that Farai was responsible for his death and it had been resolved in court. Machaya, 30, is being implicated in the murder of Chokuda with five other Zanu-PF activists, Abel Maposa, 45, brothers, Edmore Gana, 27 and Bothwell Gana, 25, Obert Gavi, 23, and Tirivashoma Mawadze, 25.

The Gana brothers are the sons of Zanu PF's Gokwe District Coordinating Committee chairperson.

The court papers read; ". . . accused 1 (Machaya) teamed up with others and went to Isheunesu Sibanda's homestead whom they suspected to have broken into their shop, after assaulting him, Sibanda implicated the deceased as an accomplice. After picking up Moses Chokuda with their vehicle, the accused persons assaulted him with open and booted feet."

The accused five were driving a Zanu-PF Gokwe DCC truck when they abducted Chokuda. An autopsy compiled by one Dr PT Venge shows Chokuda sustained fractures on his cervical spine, and had an extensively bruised and swollen face and a "very immobile neck in rigor mortis" (stiffening at death).

On April 26 this year, Tavengwa Chokuda, father of the deceased, wrote to the Attorney General's Office pleading with Johannes Tomana to ensure the matter was brought before the courts so the culprits could face justice.

"Your office is hereby reached to facilitate consequential judicial sanity into the murder case . . . I strongly believe they (fathers of accused persons) wield considerable and substantial power to block imminent justice thereto as evidenced by the burial delay and a wave of assault on my person and entire family," he wrote. 

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