Paddington Gabagaba, a former member of the Citizens Alliance for Change, expressed concern about innocent people languishing in prison after being imprisoned by “overzealous” judicial officers.
Gabagaba, who has since joined the Zanu Patriotic Front party, recounted the six months he spent behind bars after a judge in Harare found him guilty and sentenced to two years in prison.
Speaking in an exclusive interview, Gabagaba said that although he had spent time in prison without committing any crime, he had no hard feelings towards the judicial officials and could not prosecute them because that would be tantamount to fighting the Zanu PF government, a party that It belongs to him now. to.
“As for whether I will sue the state for unjustified arrest and illegal detention for almost six months in prison, I don’t think I will, only God has the answer as to why all this happened to me, it was for a purpose that God Almighty allowed by His divine will.
“I cannot be seen fighting Zanu PF through a civil suit in the courts. It is the ruling party that has the law enforcement agents that caused my arrest. I am now one of them and hence there must be peaceful coexistence,” Gabagaba said.
He added: “Being in prison anywhere on earth is not a good thing at all, and even spending a night in police cells is not a good experience at all. For me, spending six months in Harare Central Prison was like being in Hell, Inferno, Lake of Fire or Hell on Earth. All your rights will be taken away from you except the right to life.”
He said Zimbabwe’s prisons and correctional facilities were being affected by a serious lack of resources.
“ZPCS is miserably failing to deal with the ever-increasing numbers of new convicts. These are criminals who arrive in prison every two or three days after being sentenced by judges from different courts spread across the country,” said Gabagaba.
He said Harare Central Prison had the capacity to hold 800 prisoners but was holding about 1,850 prisoners under “dirty, filthy and very unsanitary conditions”.
“We were using dog blankets that were dirty and infested with lice. These are not enough to meet the needs of the ever-increasing number of convicts in the prisons.
“Some prisoners who do not have social support from relatives who can bring them blankets from outside have to survive their entire prison term on three dog blankets per person, imagine what will happen in the winter.
“There is no bread, enough sugar or cooking oil in the prison, except for a meli meal which is readily available to ensure there is a sadza in the morning and a sadza in the afternoon.
“For taste, always eat cabbage and spinach vegetables without enough cooking oil, even mongongo. In some cases prisoners suffer from a skin disease called pellagra.
He said there was no soap, towels or washing powder in prisons across the country.
Gabagaba strongly criticized some magistrates and magistrates whom he accused of taking pleasure in sending people to prison without sufficient evidence or analysis of the matters.
“There are many cases of innocent Zimbabweans being convicted and sentenced to long prison terms, yet they have not actually committed any crime. I am one of the victims of such circumstances.”
Gabagaba was found guilty of inciting the public to commit public violence after he challenged the results of the 2018 harmonized elections.
He was convicted after a YouTube video was used as evidence to bring him down.
However, he appealed his conviction saying that law enforcement officials were supposed to verify the authenticity of the video before using it as evidence but the court rejected it.
Gabagaba took the case to the Supreme Court, but it rejected his appeal and upheld the decision of the lower court.
Aggrieved by the Supreme Court’s decision, he approached the Supreme Court, which upheld his appeal.
Gabagaba called on the government to address anomalies in prisons, saying prisons should be correctional services and not death traps.
He urged the government to address the unemployment rate which he said was over 80%, saying it had led to young people resorting to unconventional means to earn a living.
Gabagaba abandoned the CCC to Zanu PF when his application to appeal to the Supreme Court was still pending, and many analysts said he wanted to curry favor with the ruling party so that his appeal would be successful.
But Gabagaba denied this, saying he had lost confidence in the opposition party and was not motivated by fear of imprisonment.
“Now that I am finally free after being acquitted by the Supreme Court, I will return to active politics in my new home in Zanu PF.
“My policies fit very well with the political style of Zanu PF, they are grounded, consistent and serious when it comes to serious politics.
He added, “The opposition political formations are always without a strategy, vision, or experience, even though they have been in existence for 20 years.” Newsday
