The Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) led by Mqondisi Moyo, has accused Zimbabwean authorities of weaponising the justice system to silence political dissent following the re-arrest of one of its members, Welcome Moyo, over an offence for which the party says he was already convicted, imprisoned and completed serving his sentence.
Moyo, one of the nine MRP activists commonly referred to as the MRP9, was arrested by officers from Bulawayo Central Police Station on June 24, 2026, which the party described as an unlawful and disturbing abuse of process.
The re-arrest reignited concerns over the treatment of MRP members and the administration of justice, with the party alleging that “recycled charges, defective warrants and unresolved court processes are used to intimidate political actors from Matabeleland.”
The MRP leader said the incident exposed a justice system plagued by confusion and increasingly deployed against political opponents.
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“This is not justice. This is persecution, confusion and State cruelty rolled into one,” Moyo told CITE.
Moyo said Welcome Moyo was among the MRP9 activists who spent three years incarcerated at Khami, Chikurubi and Harare Central prisons before being released after serving their sentence in full.
Read:https://cite.org.zw/six-mrp-members-released-after-three-years-in-prison/
However, MRP says records relating to an appeal filed by lawyers while the activists were already in prison were not regularised or formally withdrawn, creating a procedural anomaly that authorities are now allegedly relying on to suggest the activists absconded or failed to complete their sentence.
“What is now emerging is a scandalous and dangerous breakdown of the justice system,” the MRP leader said.
“While the MRP9 members were already serving their sentence, their lawyers had filed an appeal. That appeal, however, never proceeded through the courts and was never formally cancelled or regularised.”
He said the unresolved appeal appeared to have been transformed into a narrative that Welcome Moyo and his co-accused had somehow fled from justice.
“In other words, court and State records appear to reflect a fiction that these men absconded, even though the Zimbabwean State itself had them in custody for three years,” he said.
“This is not just incompetence. It is a scandal. It is an outrageous abuse of process. It is a damning indictment of a justice system so disorganised, so reckless and so hostile to truth that it can imprison a man, release him after sentence and then later hunt him down as if he were a fugitive.”
The MRP leader said matters deteriorated further when Welcome Moyo was taken to the Tredgold Magistrates’ Court in Bulawayo on Thursday.
It is said the presiding magistrate reportedly declined to entertain the matter after discovering there were no records before the court relating to the alleged warrant of arrest or the charges forming the basis of his detention.
At the time of publication Welcome Moyo was still at court.
The party further claimed that the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Service also refused to take Moyo into custody because there was no legal documentation authorising his imprisonment.
“Welcome Moyo was effectively left in legal limbo as the police, the courts and prison authorities failed to account for the very warrant and charges used to arrest him,” said the party who described the events as a “disgraceful spectacle of institutional confusion.”
The MRP leader called for Welcome Moyo’s immediate release and demanded answers from law enforcement agencies and the judiciary.
“We demand a full public explanation from the Zimbabwe Republic Police, the courts and prison authorities on how this unlawful re-arrest was allowed to happen,” he said.
The party also called for the correction of all court and State records that allegedly suggest that members of the MRP9 absconded or abandoned their sentence and demanded accountability from officials responsible for this “miscarriage of justice.”
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