TWO officials from Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have been abducted, apparently by pro-government war veterans, MDC spokesman Learnmore Jongwe said on Sunday. MDC parliamentarian Abedinico Bhebhe was kidnapped on Saturday from a petrol station in Nkayi, 260km southwest of Harare, Jongwe said. Joel Sithole, the MDC candidate for council elections in the town of Plumtree, near the border with Botswana in southwestern Zimbabwe, was kidnapped on Friday, Jongwe said. Police have said they are investigating the kidnappings, but so far, neither man has been found, he added. But Jongwe said he believed the police were afraid to push their investigations too far. “They are afraid that the forces behind the anarchy are overwhelming them and they are out of their control,” Jongwe said. Another MDC official, Patrick Nabanyama, was kidnapped from his home in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo before June parliamentary elections and has yet to be found. Since the MDC was formed less than two years ago, it has posed the most significant challenge ever to President Robert Mugabe.
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