OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 9.00pm.
FUGITIVE former Zimbabwean president Canaan Banana, on the run from a conviction charges of sodomy and sexual assault, is hiding out in South Africa, a South African diplomat said Monday.
“I talked to him on Thursday and he expressed an interest in going to South Africa,” the diplomat said, adding that the 62-year-old clergyman fled to the neighbouring country the same day. “I told him that he is going to be arrested and taken back to Zimbabwe because South Africa is a member of the Commonwealth and we do have an extradition treaty with Zimbabwe.
I can confirm that he is in South Africa,” the diplomat said.
Banana was convicted in absentia by a Harare court on Thursday of a string of sex crimes, dating from the 1980s when he was president. The Zimbabwe High Court has issued a warrant for his arrest. “We are given to understand that he made a formal approach to the High Commission in Gaborone,” a South African foreign ministry source in Pretoria said.
“If he’s in South Africa he’s certainly not here with any official documentation allowing him to be here,” the ministry source said. Police launched a manhunt in Botswana when informed by the Zimbabwean authorities that Banana had skipped bail last week. Banana faces charges in Botswana of illegally entering the country. Botswana’s Chief Immigration Officer Peter Siele said his office, however, has no record of him entering the country. Banana, a Methodist clergyman, was convicted of using his position as president between 1980 and 1987 to force men — aides, bodyguards and a gardener — into submitting to sex with him. –AFP