Itai Dzamara

Itai Dzamara (born 7 August 1979) is a Zimbabwean journalist and human rights activist. The creator and editor of the independent newspaper The News Leader, in 2014 he organised Occupy Africa Unity Square, a regular sit-in protest outside the government buildings in Harare that demanded accountability from Zimbabwe's leaders for their "failure to satisfy the needs of its people". Dzamara was forcibly disappeared in 2015, and the circumstances around his abduction, in addition to his whereabouts, remain unknown.

Early life and education Dzamara was born in Mutoko in what was then Zimbabwe Rhodesia, and attended school in Highview, Harare. He went on to study journalism and mass communication at Christian College of Southern Africa, graduating in 1999. In 2009, Dzamara established his own newspaper, The News Leader. Between 2002 and 2004 he studied business and economic journalism at the University of Zimbabwe in conjunction with the African Virtual University, and was studying law at the time of his disappearance in 2015. Dzamara quit his journalist job in October 2014 to focus on his activism.

Dzamara is married to Sheffra Dorica Dzamara, with whom he has two children, and lived in Harare at the time of his disappearance. His brother, Patson Dzamara, was also an activist; he died in 2020 of colon cancer.

Activism In 2014, Dzamara organised Occupy Africa Unity Square, a sit-in protest at Africa Unity Square in central Harare that demanded accountability from the government of Zimbabwe. The first protests occurred in October 2014, and attracted crowds of between fifty and a hundred people at the time of Dzamara's disappearance in March 2015. That same month, Dzamara hand-delivered a petition to the presidential office at the Munhumutapa Building, calling for the resignation of the then-President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, in addition to new elections. Dzamara subsequently wrote an article for Daily News in which he said he had been interrogated for several hours by officials who had strongly advised him to rescind his petition.

During a sit-in protest on 6 November 2014, Dzamara was assaulted by riot police and arbitrarily detained; he subsequently required treatment in the intensive care unit of a local hospital for his injuries. Dzamara's lawyer was also assaulted after identifying himself to police officers, and suffered from a broken wrist. Dzamara's wife, Sheffra Dzamara, subsequently filed a missing person report the same day at Glen Norah Police Station.

On 1 April 2015, the Irish human rights organisation Front Line Defenders issued a statement accusing the Zimbabwe Republic Police of failing to comply with the High Court's order to search for Dzamara. In 2024, the ZRP told Voice of America that they were unable to provide any updates concerning the status of the investigation.

National and international response The United States embassy in Zimbabwe called for a "thorough investigation" into Dzamara's disappearance. The European Union expressed its "deep concern" about his welfare.

In 2018, a documentary entitled "Where's Itai Dzamara?", detailing his activism and abduction, was broadcast on the BBC World Service.

Dzamara's wife Sheffra wrote an open letter to Mnangagwa in 2020 calling for his support with searching for her husband, and wrote about the difficulties she was experiencing trying to raise their two children alone.

In 2026, to mark the eleventh anniversary of Dzamara's death, Amnesty International Zimbabwe said that his family had experienced "years of anguish" waiting for answers, and called on the government to establish an "independent, judge-led commission of inquiry" to investigate his abduction. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights similarly called on Zimbabwean authorities to make "more efforts" to establish what happened to Dzamara.