By Investigative Reporter | ZimEye | Three soldiers from Infantry Battalion were shot dead after lodging a complaint about poor salaries.
An incident of a potentially upheaval nature nearly occurred on Thursday during the ongoing internet outage, according to two sources who spoke to ZimEye. “Everyone’s eyes right now are on Madzibaba Ishmael, and most Zimbabweans are not asking why Econet, a private company, is doing this. The soldiers were killed,” one of the sources told ZimEye.
The names of the soldiers had not been released at the time of this report.
Did ZANU create the Madzibaba Ishmael saga to cover up for their internet shutdown and execution of ZNA soldiers complaining over salaries?
— ZimEye (@ZimEye) March 25, 2024
The employment contract for soldiers prohibits them from making any kind of protest or complaint.
The Zimbabwe National Army had yet to comment at the time of writing, and a previous news comment regarding the exodus of personnel to join foreign armies had not been addressed. The ZNA is accused of executing 3 of its employees.
It was unclear at the time of writing whether the current network outage was due to written instructions from the state security ministry. The last time there was a national shutdown, the state security minister and the minister of defense had issued an instruction for all networks to disconnect their systems for several days in January 2019. During the 2018-19 period, activist Hopewell Chin’ono disclosed in writing that he had directed the Ministry of Defence to regularly target civil society. This advice negatively impacted women who were raped and activists who were tortured.
It is Chin’ono’s advice that led Emmerson Mnangagwa to come on video to disclose that the military is now going after doctors and lawyers who are attending to protesters; and as a result of that, military operations have twice split opposition leader Nelson Chamisa’s party, causing him to launch two parties one after the other in the space of 3 years.
Details of the ranks of these military officers were not disclosed at the time of writing.
THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY – REFRESH THIS PAGE FOR MORE