CLAIM: A young Nelson Chamisa (left) is consoled by the late Morgan Tsvangirai after sharing his ordeal at the hands of state security agents at an opposition rally.
SOURCE:The NewsDay
VERDICT: False
The Newsday newspaper in an opinion piece it ran on February 9, used a picture and captioned it as; “A young Nelson Chamisa(left) is consoled by the late Morgan Tsvangirai after sharing his ordeal at the hands of state security agents at an opposition rally”.
The article was carried by its sister papers The Independent, here and The Standard, here.
The picture shows the late Tsvangirai embracing a younger man at a funeral.
This picture has been used before as one showing Nelson Chamisa with the late Tsvangirai, here and here.
While there are a number of pictures of the late MDC leader with a younger Chamisa, this is not one of them.
The man in the picture used by The Standard newspaper is Sanderson Makombe.
The picture was taken in the year 2000, in the run up to the parliamentary elections, at the funeral of the late Tsvangirai’s election agent, Tichaona Chiminya.
Chiminya and another MDC activist, Talent Mabika died after their car was petrol bombed, allegedly by ZANU PF supporters and state intelligence operatives.
Sanderson Makombe was travelling in the same vehicle but survived the attack.
Other pictures used on articles from the funeral give a closer shot that shows that the individual being consoled is not Chamisa.
Conclusion
While a picture used by The Newsday is captioned, ‘A young Nelson Chamisa(left) is consoled by the late Morgan Tsvangirai after sharing his ordeal at the hands of state security agents at an opposition rally’ has been used previously on different platforms, it is not of Chamisa. The picture shows a young Sanderson Makombe being consoled by Tsvangirai at the funeral of Tichaona Chiminya. Makombe was the survivor of a politically motivated attack that left two MDC activists dead.
