The Zimbabwean
Here we continue with the REDRESS report on human rights abuses experienced by opposition MPs and election candidates. This is what happened to David Coltart, Bulawayo South MP, and MDC Shadow Minister and Secretary for Legal Affairs. Harassment of Coltart began early on. In May 2000 when he attempted to register his candidacy for the Movement for Democratic Change, the Registrar General tried to bar his nomination, forcing Coltart to prove he was a Zimbabwean and not a British citizen.
In June 2000, about a week before the election, Coltart was warned that his home would be burned. At the same time, 10 of his polling agents were detained illegally for 24 hours by self-styled war veterans, lectured and threatened.
One agent, Patrick Nabanyama, was abducted on June 19 in the presence of his wife and children. He has never been seen again and is feared dead. Eight war veterans were subsequently arrested, but later pardoned under the October 2000 amnesty. They faced trial for murder but with no body, they were found not guilty.
In August 2000, after Coltart filed legal papers in the trial of MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, Robert Mugabe declared on television there was no place for him in Zimbabwe.
Some 14 armed police and CIO agents raided Coltart’s home on October 4 that year, threatening his sons, aged 8 and 10, who were alone. Coltart’s wife returned and managed to keep the police and CIO outside until her husband arrived. The officers then produced an illegally obtained warrant to search for ‘broadcasting equipment, aircraft, boats and safes’. They found nothing.
On November 5, 2001 Cain Nkala, the Chairman of the War Veterans Association, was abducted. When Coltart returned from a visit to New York a week later, police publicly accused Coltart and threatened retribution.
Days later, on November 12, Coltart’s close friend and former campaign manager, Simon Spooner, was arrested and accused of being involved with Nkala’s disappearance. He was held in solitary confinement for five weeks in deplorable conditions. Eventually, prosecutors dropped the charges.
Then, on November 15, the private light aircraft in which Coltart was returning to Bulawayo from a parliamentary session was ordered by the CIO to turn back. As it landed in Harare, three truckloads of police and CIO agents surrounded the plane, told Coltart he was under investigation – refusing to say what for – and held him for two hours.
Heading back to Bulawayo by car, he received a tip off that hundreds of police, armed with petrol, were on their way to his home. He telephoned his wife who gathered up their children and fled.
During Cain Nkala’s burial three days later, Robert Mugabe in a nationally televised address referred to Coltart and other MDC members as ‘terrorists’.
And so it continued the following year. On the afternoon of February 16, 2002, when Coltart and his family set out to collect their eldest daughter from a friend’s birthday party, he saw some 60 members of the feared Youth Brigade roaming the neighbourhood.
The family took an alternate route to pick up the child, and returned to find 100 youths barricading both roads leading to their home. Coltart turned around and reported this to this to police – something he later regretted.
That evening, a truckload of police turned up saying they were responding to a report, and then left. Soon afterward, at 8:15 p.m., three truckloads of armed police and CIO agents returned. This time, they were menacing and claimed Coltart had shot a youth. Coltart denied the allegation and refused to let them search his house without a warrant. The officers left, threatening to return to ‘get’ him. The family fled into hiding.
The following Monday, Coltart – who does not own a gun – reported to the police and was charged with discharging a firearm. As a public humiliation, police drove him in the back of an open truck through the centre of Bulawayo and through his constituency while other officers raided his house – and found nothing.
For more than a year the case dragged on with numerous court appearances until prosecutors withdrew the charge in June 2003 after a magistrate ordered the trial to proceed forthwith.
In April 2002, the MDC received credible information of a plan to assassinate Coltart. Four months later, Robert Mugabe in a television broadcast said, “the likes of the Bennetts and Coltarts don’t belong here and if they choose to remain they can remain in prison”. And the harassment grew.
In November that year, his car’s brake linings were cut, and on March 3, 2003, a rear tyre was sabotaged. On the morning of March 15, the weekend before the MDC mass stay away, Coltart noticed a vehicle with three men and what appeared to be a weapon inside as he left home with his 9-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter to drive to a children’s sports day. With the car following him at speed, Coltart’s security team intercepted, and the trailing car gave up and left. Coltart went into hiding for two weeks.
March 2005: Despite widespread poll-rigging and intimidation, Coltart wins a resounding re-election victory.