Unmasking MDC-T violence orgy

MDC-T party makes an angelic lot constantly under siege from rivals in Zanu-PF.
The two parties, along with another faction of the MDC, form the inclusive Government in Zimbabwe in place since February 2009.

And, given the ideological chasm between the Western-aligned MDC parties and the revolutionary Zanu-PF, the Inclusive Government itself has not been without conflict, a fact that the three parties admit.
In the Global Political Agreement that made the Inclusive Government, the parties agree to end political violence which all parties were statedly culpable of in the run-up to the Agreement.

But, according to the daily MDC-T narrative, the party’s members and supporters are the only ones to be beaten, tortured, arrested and have the law “selectively” applied against them.
On this strength, the party, along with a band of Western-sponsored non-governmental organisations, has often taken to local and international forums to elicit sympathy while securing the condemnation of Zanu-PF, whom MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai has described as “merchants of violence”.

Recently, the Sadc Troika on Defence, Politics and Security organ torched a storm after a meeting on Zimbabwe in Livingstone Zambia, as it appeared to have had hook, line and sinker one-sided claims of pervasive violence against MDC-T.

However, a streak of violence runs in the MDC-T, which shows the party, is not a bunch of angels as it claims to be or as portrayed in certain sections of the media.
In fact, it has a deep culture of violence that has been directed in and outside the party. On May 29, policeman Inspector Petros Mutedza was killed by suspected MDC-T supporters while his colleague was left for dead at a shopping centre in Harare’s Glen View 3 suburb.

The law enforcement officers had gone to investigate an illegal meeting that MDC-T youths were holding at the shopping centre but were attacked with stones, steel chairs and other objects.
The hapless officer was hit and fell unconscious and was pronounced dead upon arrival at Harare Central Hospital.

This is not the first time that MDC-T supporters have attacked law enforcement agents.
In 2007, Constables Busani Moyo and Pretty Mushonga had their stars to thank after surviving a petrol-bombing at their Marimba Police Station base in Harare.

In an attack that was part of an orgy of violence by the MDC-T which also targetted State institutions and public infrastructure, the police constables sustained very serious burns on their faces and bodies, while another officer, Brenda Makamba, was lucky to escape with lesser burns.

MDC-T urban terrorism has also seen their activists bombing buses and an informal market where perceived Zanu-PF supporters trade.
The latest incident of violence follows hard on the heels of a series of intra-party clashes that characterised the run-up to the party’s congress in Bulawayo in April.

MDC-T elections across Zimbabwe saw party members at each other’s throats as the race to position certain individuals in places of influence boiled over.
In the country’s second largest city of Bulawayo, elections were stalled three times as party supporters aligned to Mr Matson Hlalo and Mr Gorden Moyo were involved in violent clashes, which led the party’s leadership to conduct the election in a desperate bid to calm the situation.

Subsequently, during the congress, at which Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, infamous for post-election violence, which claimed over 1 500 people, was guest of honour, Mr Tsvangirai admitted to the violence in his party. He pledged to set up a commission of inquiry to deal with the perpetrators of violence.

No such commission has been set up to date.
In fact, just when everyone had thought that the madness that characterised the pre-congress period was over, a senior official in the party was recently assaulted by youths at the party’s headquarters in Harare for allegedly opposing Mr Tsvangirai’s move to co-opt losers at the congress into the national executive.

Mr Sengezo Tshabangu, party chair for Matabeleland North, together with other party provincial chairpersons reportedly were opposing the inclusion of 15 members who lost elections at the party’s congress, earning him a hiding from party youths at Harvest House who have a tradition of being used to “fix” Mr Tsvangirai’s opponents.
In between the intra-party violence leading to the party’s congress in April, MDC-T was in another disconcerting show of violence when party youths targetted mourners at Warren Hills Cemetery in Harare.

The rowdy youths ran amok and attacked several mourners including Zanu-PF supporters who were at the cemetery to bury a colleague.
According to police report, four policemen were injured while four commuter omnibuses, a marked police vehicle and, several cars were damaged by the stone-throwing youths. Interestingly, the violence happened under the very noses of Mr Tsvangirai and his party vice-president Ms Thokozani Khupe – Deputy Prime Minister in the Inclusive Government – who are said to have left the scene as violence was being meted out.

As interesting is the fact that on this day, the MDC-T was honouring the life of its late activist Tonderai Ndira who was buried at the cemetery. In 2006, Ndira was identified as one of the assailants who pounced on Getrude “Trudy” Stevenson, now Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to Senegal, leaving her battered and bruised after a “pro-Senate” meeting in Ndira’s neighbourhood of Mabvuku.
Ndira and his brother Barnabas were among about 40 youths who attacked Stevenson and, three other members of the splinter pro-Senate MDC. The issue of the Senate – when it was proposed that Zimbabwe

Parliament revert to the old bicameral system in 2005 – had spawned disagreements within the MDC leading to the split of the party in October of that year.
With it came violence.

Apart from Ambassador Stevenson, Professor Welshman Ncube now leader of the other faction of the MDC was another senior member of the old MDC who faced violence from party youths, apparently for his perceived threat to Mr Tsvangirai, which resulted in him being banished from the party’s headquarters.

For his part, Prof Ncube was to confess that MDC, of which he was secretary general before the split, had been recruiting and training youths for violence.
He is quoted in a report on MDC-T violence recently published by Zimbabwe Today as having told British-based author and academic Blessing Miles-Tendi that the party recruited and trained notorious pickpockets and thieves from high-density suburbs of Highfield and Mbare, for violent uprisings.

“When these youths were not effectively used in mass action,” reveals Prof Ncube, “they then became a readily available army anyone who wanted youths, to hire against an opponent, they were then readily available.”

Such youths were in the eye of the storm in April last year when they assaulted the then director-general Mr Toendepi Shonhe, took his car and barred him from getting into the MDC headquarters. In the desperate violence, MDC Director of Security Mr Chris Dhlamini reportedly tried to intervene but was also blocked from entering the party headquarters.

The violence was indicated to be emanating from power struggles within the party. Five youths were subsequently expelled from the party in connection with the violence.
Thus, so much has happened since the launch of the party at the Chitungwiza Auaqatics Complex in 1999 where journalists from the ZBC were harassed while their counterparts from Zimpapers were advised by party security personnel to enter the venue at their own peril because they could not guarantee their safety.

In 2000, at the first anniversary of the MDC-T, Mr Tsvangirai called on President Mugabe to “go peacefully” or be “removed violently”. Apart from the hot-headed youths that have been involved in violence, some senior members of the MDC-T have gone for the jugular too. These include Ms Khupe; Deputy Minister of Youth, Indigenisation and Empowerment and Masvingo Central legislator Mr Tongai Matutu; party spokesperson and Nyanga North legislator Mr Douglas Mwonzora.

However, in an interview with this paper on Monday, Mr Mwonzora sought to distance his party from violence. “We condemn all forms of violence,” said Mwonzora shifting the blame to “external forces”.
Commenting on the killing of a policeman in Glen View he said: “We are worried that before any investigations were made in this matter, the police rushed to blame the MDC in the Press. We therefore are of the feeling that the resultant arrests are simply a way to justify the blame. We call upon the police to investigate the matter in a professional, non-partisan and impartial manner so as to bring the true offenders to book.

“We condemn violence directed against police officers, equally we condemn police violence against the public.”
Mr Mwonzora played down the intra-party violence that has dogged his party: “We deny the extent of the so-called intra-party violence and the generalisation that there is violence within the party.
“There was some violence in the run-up to the congress and its basis, is being investigated because it died after the congress. It must have been the work of external forces.”

He said the commission that Mr Tsvangirai had promised to set up to probe violence was being constituted and, its members would be announced in due course.
“I assure you. (MDC-T) President Tsvangirai is a serious man and did not say what he said in jest.” Mr Mwonzora said that the fact that very few members of his party had been convicted in the courts indicated that his party was not violent.

“How many MDC supporters were arrested and how many were convicted? The numbers don’t correspond,” he said.
But, the violence in MDC-T has been seen in disturbing light.

Zanu-PF Politburo member and political analyst Professor Jonathan Moyo believes that the violent streak in the MDC-T owes to its founders who happen to be Zimbabwe’s violent former colonisers.
“It is a fact that violence is synonymous with the life and times of the MDC-T,” Prof Moyo said in an interview.

“It is not about the weekend violence, the run-up to its congress, in 2005 leading to the split. It has roots in the foundation of MDC. Its origins and creation not only by colonial West whose violence is a matter of public record and ex-Rhodesian Selous Scouts is directly responsible for the Selous Scout tactics that the party employs,” said Prof Moyo.
He noted that there were well known ex-members of the notorious counter-revolutionary forces that the Selous Scouts were that continued to direct affairs in MDC-T including Eddie Cross and, self-exiled party treasurer Roy Bennett.

“The only politics that the Selous Scouts and Rhodie farmers know is violence and, they are using the MDC-T as a platform for violence. That blacks are the majority is irrelevant and it is typical of the time when the Selous Scouts operated as they used young people without political philosophy and ideology but were in it for money, alcohol and drugs,” he said.

Prof Moyo noted that MDC-T’s intra-party violence reflected ideological bankruptcy and selfishness.
“Those who orchestrate violence and regime change fear their own shadows and, they become violent if they fear challenges from those that want their positions or align themselves to nationalist forces.

“For violent organisations, violence begins at home and it is used against external enemies.”
He pointed that MDC-T differed from Zanu-PF in dealing with internal differences as it engaged in violence while the latter resolved or settled scores through votes which could see selfish members simply “kicking the ball in the bush” but without the use of violence.

Prof Moyo believes that MDC-T has shown itself to be a violent party and no-one will heed their cries of murder at forums like Sadc.
They pulled that card in Livingstone where others, including Zanu-PF and regional leaders were sleeping.

They produced a dossier littered with lies that have been exposed and regional leaders will revisit that to bring to account those behind it for the confusion it caused.
“Since Livingstone, they have used violence and killed a policeman. Who in Sadc would believe them when they purport to be victims of violence?”

With Zimbabwe set to be discussed on the sidelines of the Sadc-Comesa-East African Community Tripartite meeting in South Africa, it can be surmised that MDC-T can try any other stratagem besides playing victim of political violence hitherto its trump card to glean the support of the region.
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