By Richard Mugobo & Khanyo Farisè
For 10 years, Sheffra Dzamara has endured untold suffering, endlessly reliving the memories of her husband, Itai Dzamara. Itai was abducted on 9 March 2015 from a barber shop in Harare’s Glen View suburb. Five unidentified men handcuffed him and drove off in a vehicle with concealed number plates. That was the last time he was seen.
The ordeal that his family has undergone demonstrates the cruelty of enforced disappearances. Regrettably, as many African countries regress to authoritarian practices, enforced disappearances have increasingly been used as a tactic to weaponise fear by leaders intent on staying in power by avoiding scrutiny and criticism.
Enforced disappearance in Africa can be traced back to colonial times when governments disappeared freedom fighters to silence them. Today, African states use enforced disappearance in a range of contexts, against different groups, including human rights defenders, ethnic minorities, migrants and opposition leaders.
In recent years, the practice has been used by authorities in countries including Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Zimbabwe and Tanzania as a tool to silence political opponents, journalists and civil society activists.
Today, African states use enforced disappearance in a range of contexts, against different groups, including human rights defenders, ethnic minorities, migrants and opposition leaders.
Richard Mugobo and Khanyo Farise
Some recent examples include the ordeal of Kenyan Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan Agatha Atuhaire in Tanzania. Eighty-nine people were forcibly disappeared in Kenya for participation in the anti-Finance Bill protests while, in August 2023, Nelson Mukwenha and Womberaishe and Sanele Mukhulani were abducted and tortured after Zimbabwe’s elections.
The crime of enforced disappearance is a reality on the African continent but the available data does not provide an accurate picture regarding the scale of it. In its 2021 report, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances noted that of the 46 490 cases of enforced disappearance in the world, 4 765 cases, or around 10%, concerned African states.
In countries like Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger, enforced disappearance has been used by military authorities as a means of repression, silencing any criticism of the authorities’ power. To suppress dissenting voices, the defence and security forces regularly resort to enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions.
Conflicts in the region are a major contributor to enforced disappearance. For example, that in Sudan is reported to be the primary reason for the increase in missing persons in Africa recorded by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Over 82 000 people across Africa are registered as missing, with the organisation.
East Africa also recently witnessed an unprecedented surge in reported cases of enforced disappearances. In Kenya, a peak of enforced disappearances was witnessed at the height of protest action in 2024. The Law Society of Kenya reported that at least 89 people were forcibly disappeared in connection with the country’s anti-Finance Bill protests, with authorities using unlawful force that killed 65 people, and injured hundreds more, and arbitrarily detaining and arresting peaceful demonstrators.
In Guinea, Omar Sylla and Mamadou Billo Bah, leaders of the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution and journalist Habib Marouane Camara were forcibly disappeared in 2024. There has been no sign that authorities have made any attempt to find them.
In May 2025, Atuhaire, from Uganda, and Kenyan Mwangi were arrested in Tanzania while on a trip to observe the trial of opposition politician Tundu Lissu. The two were driven to an unknown location, where they were held incommunicado, stripped naked, beaten and tortured by state security officers.
What all these cases have in common is that the disappeared dared to challenge those in power. Another common thread is that, to date, no one has been held accountable.
Richard Mugobo and Khanyo Farise
Women have particular vulnerabilities during enforced disappearances as they are often subjected to sexual violence. That was the case for Zimbabwean activists Joanah Mamombe, Netsai Marova and Cecillia Chimbiri, who were reportedly tortured by authorities after being abducted. Instead of getting justice, they ended up in jail and appearing in court for their peaceful activism. To date, no one has been held accountable for their abduction and torture.
What all these cases have in common is that the disappeared dared to challenge those in power. Another common thread is that, to date, no one has been held accountable.
When states fail to act despite overwhelming evidence implicating the perpetrators it undermines the rule of law and erodes public trust in institutions.
The lack of accountability for these acts, coupled with the absence of effective investigations, not only leads to suffering for victims and their families but also emboldens those who carry out these heinous crimes.
Enforced disappearance is prohibited under the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CPED), as well as under customary international law and states are obliged to bring all those suspected of criminal responsibility to justice in fair trials before ordinary civilian courts and without recourse to the death penalty. States are further required to take steps to prevent the crime.
Some states have aligned themselves to the global legal framework on enforced disappearance. Only 21 out of 55 African states have ratified the CPED and only one has recognised the competence of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to receive and consider communications from, or on behalf of, victims or other parties.
The convention is a critical tool for victims or their relatives to access justice, truth and reparations, with many countries lacking specific laws to prevent and address enforced disappearances, making it harder to prosecute those suspected of criminal responsibility and provide justice for victims.
As the world marked International Day for Victims of Enforced Disappearances on 30 August, the statistics of those who remain missing should serve as a stark reminder of the unfinished business for states that have not ratified CPED. It is time for all countries to ratify the convention without reservations and implement all obligations under the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the Guidelines on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances in Africa.
They must also adopt long-term, comprehensive measures to prevent and eliminate enforced disappearance, which involves establishing effective training programmes for law enforcement and other personnel.
Importantly, states must shed light on the fate of those who remain disappeared. They must set up independent and impartial inquiries into the cases of disappearance; they must make public the findings of the inquiries.
We must collectively say, “Never again will states use fear to forcefully disappear those with dissenting opinions or who are perceived as such.”
Khanyo Farisè is the regional researcher for civic space at Amnesty International’s East and Southern Africa regional office and Richard Mugobo is the relief communications officer at Amnesty International, Zimbabwe.
This opinion piece first ran in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian
