Zimbabwe police say drowning report false

Zimbabwe police say drowning report false

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By Oscar Nkala

ZIMBABWE'S chief police spokesman says state-media reports that 60 Zimbabwean border jumpers drowned in the Limpopo River while trying to illegally enter South Africa are most probably false.

Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena also confirmed that no South African manpower and equipment was ever brought in to help search for the border jumpers who were reportedly swept away by the Limpopo near Beitbridge.

Bvudzijena said Zimbabwean police had abandoned the search when it quickly emerged that the drowning report was a hoax. He said reports of heavy South African involvement had come from the newspapers and not the police.

"We never said there were any joint operations between Zimbabwe and South Africa on that issue. We would not call for help when we had not even confirmed whether anyone had drowned. It was clear that there was no drowning and therefore nothing to investigate," Bvudzijena said.

Business and police intelligence sources in Beitbridge told AND that the hoax began last Friday as a rumour that up to 100 border jumpers had drowned.

"The hoaxy nature of the report was evident the moment rumour started circulating. It died over the weekend, only to re-emerge as a headline on The Chronicle on Monday," said a police source in Beitbridge. "Because police were also confused, there were half-hearted search attempts which only became intense when their bosses in Harare asked why no action had been taken for more than five days.

"No evidence was found and here we did not see or hear of all the helicopters and sub-aqua divers the Chronicle reported. The drowning bit could have been a rumour gone wrong but the involvement of South African Police Services (SAPS) was an outright lie, a figment of the reporter's imagination."

A farmer in Beitbridge said he had also failed to find any substance in the reports even after contacting South African farmers in the vicinity of the Dite area, where the drowning is reported to have happened. He also said he never saw or heard any South Africa helicopters in action during the search.

Matabeleland South police spokesman Inspector Johnson Nyoni said he knew nothing about the search, the involvement of the South Africa Civil Protection Unit (SACPU) or the granting of South African airplanes permission to fly into Zimbabwe as part of the rescue mission.

"The best person to ask would be the Chronicle reporter. He seems to have witnessed all things that police did not see. His accounts say he went down to the river, maybe you should ask him for photographs of the South Africans and the sub-aqua teams in the rescue mission he witnessed. We know nothing apart from what he wrote," said Nyoni.

Ronel Otto, the Limpopo police spokesperson told the SABC on Thursday: "The
police in Limpopo are not aware of any drownings of a group of people in the
Limpopo River. We did not get any formal request for assistance in a search
or recovery operation".

Efforts to get a comment from the Chronicle reporter and the newspaper's editors were fruitless - A.N.D Africa
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