New Zimbabwe
27 February 2012
A Minister has launched a desperate online plea for information about his political activist pal who left home on February 8 and never returned.
Education Minister David Coltart says Paul Chizuze – a paralegal activist who has worked with Amani Trust, ZimRights, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace among other organisations – left his Bulawayo home just after 8PM and was never seen again.
In messages posted on Twitter and Facebook, Coltart said: “I am very distressed about the disappearance of a good friend and colleague, Paul Chizuze.
“Paul was one of the first paralegals we trained at the Bulawayo Legal Projects Centre in the 1980s. He has been one of the most consistent human rights activists I know – a man of great compassion and integrity.”
Chizuze is said to have been driving a white twin cab Nissan Hardbody Reg Number ACJ 3446, and Coltart says finding the vehicle would help police focus their investigations.
Coltart said Chizuze had “selflessly worked to expose human rights abuses” by President Robert Mugabe’s government over the last decade.
Chizuze was among those who “maintained the campaign to uncover the truth of what happened to Patrick Nabanyama after his abduction and disappearance in 2000”, the minister added in a reference to his election agent who disappeared without trace.
Chizuze’s colleagues appealed to the police to “pursue all the possibilities” in the search, but they fear as the days pass, chances of finding him alive may be lessening.