Mnangagwa Says Will Make Public Zim Post-Election Violence Report

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has reportedly reassured Zimbabweans that he would make public the report by a commission of inquiry into the post-election violence that left at least six people dead on August 1.

According to NewsDay, Mnangagwa said this while speaking to heads of foreign missions in the country at a re-alignment workshop.

Mnangagwa Says Will Make Public Zim Post-Election Violence Report

The report quoted Mnangagwa as saying that the "hearings were done in public, so the report would be shared in public".

Mnangagwa's remarks followed a public outcry after his spokesperson George Charamba claimed in the state-owned Chronicle newspaper that the report was for Mnangagwa's "eyes only" and that its publication would be his "prerogative".

University of Zimbabwe law professor Lovemore Madhuku, who was one of the commissioners, was cited as saying that the president was bound by his promise to make the report public.

Gunfire

Madhuku, however said there was no law that required the president to make the report immediately public after receiving it.

"There is, in the law, room to be given to the President to read the report and thereafter to make it public. There is no law, which says the president should make the report public immediately after being given. The procedure at law is that he receives the report; he studies it and then makes it public. As far as we are concerned, the report will be made public," Madhuku was quoted as saying.

On August 1, armed soldiers were deployed in the capital, Harare, to suppress a protest against delays in announcing results of the country's first elections without former ruler Robert Mugabe.

Gunfire erupted and six people died, Associated Press reported.

President Mnangagwa then set up a commission of inquiry, headed by former South African president Kgalema Motlanthe, to probe the killings.