The MDC hangman is back in town
“IF Mugabe will not go peacefully, we will remove him violently!” These words earned Mr Morgan Tsvangirai a date with the police and the courts after he had unwittingly said these words at a rally 17 years ago.
Ever since that day, the MDC-T has made several violent dates within and without its rank and file.
The party’s penchant for violence, fuelled by its frustrations over dismal performance on the electoral field, has not spared its own children either. During its elective congress in 2014 which was disguised as a democratic process (for the convenience of sanitising their name) saw schools of violent mobs attacking each other with the intention of influencing the process.
As fate would have it, violence won the day on that fateful congress as the favoured youthful secretary general candidate, Advocate Nelson Chamisa lost the vote to Mr Douglas Mwonzora, a candidate who was emerging from the woods.
Both men had previously been national spokespersons of the party which Adv Chamisa won through his eloquent discharge of the duty.
The 2014 violence played at the Bulawayo Magistrates’ Courts, with rival gangs of the party threatening each other actively and passively in front of the courts of law.
So flagrant is the MDC’s respect for the rule of law and State institutions that only this week, the party’s supporters are up in the courts again for the murder of a duty uniformed police officer.
Several attempts at the innocent lives of the police officers have seen some being violently attacked, some dying, some left for dead, while others are maimed for life, threatening their families to penury.
Police have investigated the party before on alleged acts of violence, especially targeted at the police, its members, supporters and opponents at large. Never has the party leadership raised a single finger against violence, even if such violence has been meted at its own rank and file.
Three members of the party are serving 20-year sentences for the murder of a duty uniformed police officer, Inspector Petros Mutedza in Glen View in 2008 during violent demonstrations organised and funded by the party. What the party appears to forget is that people do not eat violence; neither does the economy grow from violence.
A couple of years ago, MDC-T leader, Mr Tsvangirai threatened the national infrastructure with violence as a means of sabotaging the Zanu-PF Government.
It is during the same time, that a massive surge in theft and vandalism of public utilities infrastructure was recorded, a move that crippled service delivery in a very huge way.
The National Railways of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority and the public telephone utility, Tel-One suffered from well co-ordinated theft syndicates of transmitter and communications wire. Together with the theft of these, transformer oil theft became the order of the day.
The NRZ’s electrified stretch between Harare and Dabuka, Gweru, saw its last days during this same period in question. How shiploads of telegraph and copper transmitter cables found a ready market and passage to neighbouring countries was true testimony that the MDC had extraterritorial powers helping it in this regard.
On June 29, 2017, another duty uniformed cop, Talkmore Phiri, was fatally assaulted without provocation by MDC-T security details disguised as street vendors manning the party’s headquarters, Harvest House along Nelson Mandela Avenue in Harare.
The MDC-T has lately developed bloodthirstiness for police officers, including those going about their normal duties of maintaining law and order.
This day in question was a peaceful and tranquil day which lacked any threat of public disturbances and disorder. It baffles the mind then how unprovoked assailants could fatally strike an innocent civil servant in such a savage manner.
The MDC appears oblivious that violence begets violence and this is not good for national development.
Zimbabweans are naturally peace loving people who frown at any form of violence and would obviously not support any party that thrives on violence.