THEY WANTED TO KILL ME
…Joe Black Apple relives abduction, torture by UPND cadres
By Mast Reporter
THEY would heat an iron bar on a fire, then press it on my bare body, burning my skin, to force me to insult someone,” Lusaka youth John Nyondo narrated yesterday in reference to his recent abduction and cruel torture by known ruling party cadres.
Nyondo, a member of the Patriotic Front (PF) popularly known as Joe Black Apple, was recently abducted by a horde of United Party for National Development (UPND) cadres at a cemetery in Lusaka.
The identified cadres later tortured him for hours and left him for dead before he was found lying unconscious by residents of Mandevu Township where they dumped him.
“Aaa! Baalefwayo kunjipaya [they wanted to kill me],” he narrated to PF Matero Member of Parliament Miles Sampa when he visited him at his residence, where he is recuperating after being discharged from hospital.
Nyondo’s account provides a chilling glimpse into his harrowing ordeal while in the hands of his ruthless UPND captors allegedly led by a man known as Kalufyanya.
“They found me attending the burial of a relative, who was also a leader, a secretary in the PF in Munali at the Old Leopards Hill Cemetery. When we arrived they had already regrouped and were waiting for us,” he said.
“Ndefika fye palya, ndeikila fye muli motoka efyo banshingulukile. ‘Oh, tukonkele iwe wine. Tulekufwya. Balekufwaya ba boss [immediately I arrived and came out of the vehicle, they surrounded me and told me ‘oh, we are looking for you, our leader wants to see you],” Nyondo said.
He said he was able to recognise the people who had surrounded him and were ordering him to accompany them as members of the UPND.
Nyondo said he declined to go with them, but they insisted that he comply because their leader was waiting for him.
They seized him and a struggle ensued as he tried to resist and free himself because he sensed danger in the manner they were trying to force him to go with them.
At this stage, Nyondo recounted, he realised that there were many other UPND cadres who had been hiding in small buses parked nearby.
“Efyo batolweke mu tumabasi. Efyo baishilenguma fye nshimbi uku [then they jumped out of the small buses and they hit me here with an iron bar. They also attacked me with tasers and sprayed pepper spray into my eyes. Then they dragged me into their bus and sped off,” Nyondo recalled.
He said his captors took him to an area in Mandevu Township where residents distill a local liquor called kacasu and started psychologically and physically torturing him over his criticism of President Hakainde Hichilema.
“There were fires which distillers were using to distill kacasu. They would heat an iron bar in the fires. Each time they ordered me to insult someone and I refused, they would bring the hot iron bar and press it hard on my bare body, because they had stripped me naked, and burn my skin to force me to obey,” Nyondo told Sampa.
He said he was unable to defend himself because his tormentors were over 50 in number, but he knew bout 20 of them very well.
And Nyondo explained why he was in the company of former comedian, now a politician, Thomas Sipalo known as Difficulty whom he said was like his older brother.
“I was with Difficulty because I am with him most of the time and we do a lot of work together. He is like my older brother,” he said.
Nyondo displayed some of the still fresh wounds the UPND cadres inflicted on him.
Shortly after the assault, a video went viral on social media showing a dishevelled and terrified Nyondo being mocked, humiliated and tortured including being forced to proclaim his allegiance to Hichilema by the cadres.
The video sparked public outrage forcing the provincial leadership of the UPND to reluctantly issue a strong statement condemning its cadres.
But so far, police have only apprehended the driver of the bus used in the abduction while the well-known cadres involved in the crime remain free.
The abduction and torture of Joe Black Apple challenges Hichilema’s repeated boasting that his government has ended political violence involving cadres.
