Former Zanu-PF activist turned opposition leader, Acie Lumumba’s Facebook account has been closed down. Lumumba, real name, William Mutumanje, has built up quite a following in the past few weeks after he made a series of Facebook Live videos in which he seemed to accurately predict political events before they occured. Lumumba was initially dismissed as a loudmouth who was seeking political relevancy until he made a video in which he “predicted” that president Robert Mugabe would not be in power in 48 hours time. In the video which was made before the Zimbabwe Defence Forces(ZDF) seized power in military takeover last week, Lumumba said:
What this essentially means is that in the next 48 hours he will no longer be President of this country. Mark my words. In the next 48 hours he will no longer be the President of this country because the military will step in. I’ll tell you how the military will step in. Number one; they’ll simply move into all television and radio stations. So you will find all media broadcasts will be made by the military. They’ll take over they’ll announce on radio, this time there will be no press conference. They will announce on the national broadcaster that we have taken over the country. They will get support because the West is watching what is happening right now.
A few days later Lumumba was one of the first people to say that Zimbabweans needed to gather in the streets in a solidarity march to prevent Robert Mugabe from remaining as president. In the video Lumumba claimed that Mugabe thought that people still loved him, so he needed to be shown that it was not so. This was again dismissed as an alarmist statement, but hours after Lumumba made the call, other groups including the war veterans started making the same call to action. This resulted in the Saturday solidarity marches where thousands of Zimbabweans turned up.
So it comes as a surprise that Lumumba closed down his Facebook account as he has been a prolific user, using Facebook Live to comment on the political situation in the country. There is also the possibility that Lumumba’s account was closed down by a third party as he may have been deemed to be a security liability as he was constantly revealing information before it was opportune. Or Lumumba could have been convinced to take down his account on his own, for the sake of security.
Pindula tried to get in touch with Lumumba to establish why he had closed down his account and so far we have been unable to reach him as his phone is not being answered. We have also left messages for him and he is yet to respond.
Curiously, before he was expelled from Zanu-PF, Lumumba was aligned to the G40 Faction which seems to have been the target of the military takeover, codenamed “Operation Restore Legacy.”