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| Mugabe pushes for reopening of Tekere murder case |
| By Our Correspondent HARARE, May 1, 2007 - President Robert Mugabe is reportedly pushing for the reopening of the 1980 murder case of former government minister Edgar Tekere, who recently published an autobiography which is critical of him. On August 4, 1980, a little over four months after Zimbabwe attained independence, Tekere, then Minister of Manpower Planning and Development, in the company of bodyguards, visited a farm on the outskirts of Harare, where they shot and killed a white farm manager, Gerald Adams . Tekere went on trial, together with is bodyguards. But the High Court, on December 8, acquitted the veteran politician of the murder, bringing to an end a sensational case that threatened to undermine Mugabe's fledgling government. Presiding judge Justice Pitman had found Tekere guilty of the murder of Adams and the attempted murder of five soldiers at Stamford Farm, but he was outvoted by the majority decision of two assessors Chris Greenland and Peter Nemapare, who agreed on the acquittal of the controversial politician. The assessors held that while Tekere had killed Adams, he was acting in connection with the suppression of terrorism in terms of legislation inherited from rebel Rhodesian government of Prime Minister Ian Smith. Tekere's autobiography, A lifetime of Struggle, which was published in January, was subjected to a barrage of criticism by ruling party politicians who claimed that the controversial politician was seeking to distort the history of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle in order to promote himself. In his book, Tekere explained the role he personally played in Mugabe's ascendancy to power. His version of events riled Mugabe and his lieutenants, who dimissed Tekere as a mad man bent ondistorting history for personal gain. Following this controversy, sources in the ruling party now say there are steps being taken to re-open Tekere's old murder case. Mugabe is reported to have ordered the Attorney General's Office to revisit the case and find if they are any loopholes to bring the firebrand politician back on trial. "As we speak right now some senior police officers have been instructed to re-open the case," said the source. "They have been asked to do a thorough job on the matter. "It's an uphill task, but they have no choice. You know if that man gives you orders...you have to act accordingly he is the most feared man in this country." Legal experts, however, dismissed the attempt to bring Tekere back to trial as a futile exercise by a desparate Mugabe, who had failed to run the country and now sought to vent his rage on every one opposed to his views. "There is no legal basis to re-open the case," a legal expert in government said. "You can never be re-tried once acquitted by a competent court on substantial the same charge, even if there was new evidence to show clearly that he committed the crime. "It's the president's strategy to discredit his rival." Tekere, a former secretary general of the ruling party was expelled from the ruling party for the second time, last month, after the Manicaland Zanu-PF provincial executive found him guilty of "denigrating and vilifying" Mugabe in his autobiography. |
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