Organised Violence and Torture
in Zimbabwe in 1999

3. Extra-judicial Killings
The use of excessive force by the police which is not commensurate with the danger of the situation facing them is a cause for concern. During the year there were reports of people who were shot and killed by the police and in some instances these can be attributed to the negligent use of firearms. In other cases, however, the police opened fire to kill people suspected of being criminals. This, it can be argued, amounts to extra-judicial execution, which clearly runs counter to the provisions of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which guarantees the right to life.

The Zimbabwe Standard [7th March 1999] reported two incidents which suggest the use of firearms by the police to summarily execute people suspected of involvement in criminal activities. In the first incident a student teacher was shot in the leg during an off campus demonstration. In the second, police shot and killed a 20-year-old man named Van Niekerk near Bulawayo. It was alleged that the Traffic Police had apprehended Van Niekerk whilst driving with his friend in Gweru but fled after discovering that Van Niekerk had a pistol. They later set up a roadblock near Bulawayo. Van Niekerk and his friend tried to drive through the roadblock whereupon the police opened fire. Two shots were aimed at the driver’s door, hitting Van Niekerk in the shoulder and the heart.

A relative of the deceased disputed the claim that the deceased and his friend were trying to escape from the police, saying that the two had previously arranged to drive to Bulawayo. The police expressed the view that the killing of Van Niekerk was justifiable. As a result no investigation into the shooting was carried out.

Later in the year, again in Bulawayo, police shot and killed Misheck Beremauro. According to the Daily News [2 July 1999], eye witnesses said that Beremauro was shot inside a car, handcuffed and left lying in a pool of blood by the side of the road. He later died at the Bulawayo United Hospital. The cause of death was severe bleeding after bullets shattered his right femur and cut open his blood vessels.

The police said he was a suspected car thief trying to run away from arrest. However, it appears that there was no merit in the suspicion that Beremauro had stolen the motor vehicle as the owner confirmed that he had given it to Beremauro to look for buyers. There were no investigations into the shooting as the police maintained their position that they had merely killed a thief.

In another case, Nelly Chirangwi, a mother of five who was on her way to work, was shot and killed at a roadblock by a policeman. The police said that an officer opened fire at a car which suddenly made an about turn at the roadblock. It was reported in the Daily News [7th April 1999] that the officer missed his target and the bullet ricocheted off the tarmac and hit Chirangwi who was a passenger in a commuter omnibus. The bullet hit her at the back and came out through the chest. Questions were raised whether the version given by the police is correct since it seems improbable that after hitting the tarmac the bullet would ricochet horizontally to hit someone at the back and come out through the chest.

Two inquests into deaths during the food riots were reported. A Mutare magistrate ruled that charges be preferred against a police officer who shot and killed Clever Gunda after the court heard that Gunda died of gunshot wounds sustained after police opened fire to disperse a crowd. One of the shots ricocheted off the ground and hit Gunda between his nose and left eye. The cause of death, according to medical evidence, was brain damage caused by a gunshot. Police officers who testified during the inquest indicated that warning shots should not have been fired into the ground but in the air in a safe direction before shooting to disable or kill as a last resort.

In the other inquest, a magistrate in Gweru heard that Kudzai Ndlovu died as a result of bleeding of the lower part of the lungs caused by a gunshot. The magistrate recommended that law enforcement agencies be trained to deal with riots and that further investigations be held, possibly by independent investigators, to establish the circumstances leading to the death. TOP