Police officers allegedly assaulted a family from Bulawayo’s Nkulumane suburb for running a shebeen in their house.
The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) is currently conducting an operation countrywide to shut down all shebeens operating under the current COVID-19 induced national lockdown regulations.
Jesta Mudangayi (48) said that she was assaulted together with her three children on 6 August around 2 am.
Narrating their ordeal to CITE, Mudangayi said she was woken up by some people who wanted to buy alcohol from her. She said:
Since these were people I knew, I decided to sell them the alcohol as they were now becoming a nuisance outside my house.
While they were on their way to their house they came across some police officers who were on patrol and they came back to our house.
They went into the room where my children were sleeping and they claimed it was some of our patrons who were sleeping.
While I was still pleading with them not to harm my children, one of the officers slapped me and I fell.
Mudangayi added that police officers handcuffed one of her daughters and they were taken to the police station where they were detained overnight.
A neighbour said she was woken up by the noise and they were scared to intervene, fearing that they could also be arrested or beaten as the police officers were “violent”.
Contacted for a comment, Bulawayo police spokesperson, Inspector Abednico Ncube denied the allegations that the family was assaulted during the raid. He said:
Our police only carried out raids in houses that we were told there are shebeens and we did not receive any report of anyone assaulted during the raids of shebeens but we have arrests of people who are operating shebeens without any license.