adminbefore meeting the Zanu-PF Mashonaland West provincial leadership.
Cde Mutasa is on a countrywide tour of the provinces explaining the Politburo’s decision to disband the District Co-ordinating Committees.
At the prison, he narrated with vivid details how he was summarily picked up in Harare in the early hours of November 18, 1970 together with several others.
He was sent to Chinhoyi Prison where he was placed in solitary confinement in Cell Number 15.
Cde Mutasa said he was arrested and detained for one and half years without trial for his role in resisting and propping up the resistance by national hero Chief Rekayi Tangwena in Manicaland Province.
“I was here (Chinhoyi Prison) at the prison cell, but I did nothing wrong save to carry a burning desire to free the people of Zimbabwe.
“The white settler regime did not like the role I played in helping Chief Tangwena resist and fight for the land of his ancestors,” he said.
Cde Mutasa’s wife Cde Gertrude Mutasa said her husband’s incarceration was a difficult phase for her family as they had to seek shelter at Matthew Rusike when they
had no where else to go.
“I had four children then and their father was the breadwinner. It was a difficult period in our life,” she said.
She recalled how emaciated Cde Mutasa was when she finally managed to see him a week after his detention.
“He was emaciated and had changed so much that you could see that he was unhealthy but it soon changed after we started bringing him weekly supplies every Wednesday,” she said.
Amai Mutasa said it was a period of uncertainty as people were being hanged in extra-judicial killings meted on blacks by the Rhodesian regime. The couple spoke to the inmates telling them that they needed to refocus their lives as there was life after prison.
Cde Mutasa was accompanied by Politburo members Cdes Webster Shamu and Ignatius Chombo and other party members. Cde Shamu described the visit as an-eye-opener.
Meanwhile, the provincial leadership endorsed the decision to disband the DCCs saying it debugged the party of unnecessary bureaucracy that weigh down on the party.
Cde Chombo said the move had unclogged the party of bureaucracy that spawned divisions and factionalism.
Provincial chairman Cde John Mafa said Mashonaland West would implement the party’s decision and work to strengthen it ahead of elections.
Online Reporter