Counter accusations surrounding the botched prayer meeting planned for missing activist, Itai Dzamara, continued Sunday with the Zimbabwe Pastors Fellowship on Monday denying that it tried to hijack the prayer meeting, as alleged by Dzamara’s family.
In a damning statement, the Dzamara family said the prayer meeting was its initiative and “the pastors were only invited to the table but they were acting as if it was their brainchild.”
The family also attacked Zimbabwe Pastors’ Fellowship president, Reverend Watson Furayi, for collaborating with the police to see that the prayer would not go ahead, an allegation the reverend denied.
“I know the Dzamara family are in pain. They are in sorrow. Things are not well with Dzamara family. But what I can say as a man of God is it’s only our prayer meeting was intervened by the political parties. The politicians, they wanted to take over,” said Furayi.
But Patson Dzamara, who signed the Dzamara family statement and is brother to abducted Itai, insists the pastors, just like the political parties, were invited to the prayer meeting.
“First of all it was actually wrong for them to allege that they would call off the prayer. Why? Because they were actually an invited guest at the table. It was not their brainchild, it was not their project,” Dzamara said.
Studio 7 also reached Movement for Democratic Change member, Job Sikhala, who was also accused of meddling in the attempted prayer meeting. He denied these allegations.
“That’s absolute nonsense because from the first place what you have to understand is that at no particular point did I contact anyone in the police service for this (prayer) service,” charged Sikhala, who said the prayer meeting was organized by the Dzamara family.