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President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Thursday that some retrogressive, unpatriotic and selfish individuals were abusing the democratic space ushered in by the Second Republic. The President said the advent of the new dispensation and the Second Republic saw the expansion of the democratic space in the country as enshrined in the Constitution. He said this culminated in the holding of peaceful, free, fair and credible harmonised elections.

The President said it was however regrettable that some individuals were bent on abusing the democracy that people were now enjoying. “The new dispensation opened up democratic space with individuals and civil society groups now openly expressing themselves although some have taken advantage of this openness to engage in violent demonstrations and propagation of hate speech especially on social media,” said President Mnanngagwa.

He urged Zimbabweans to entrench constitutionalism and promote democratic tenets. The opposition MDC-Alliance started abusing the democratic space when it was allowed to stage demonstrations against what it perceived as shortcomings of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) before the harmonised elections.

The opposition took advantage of this freedom of expression to also threaten the electorate ahead of the elections. The MDC-Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa made several threats to shut down the country and cause chaos in the event his party lost the elections which it indeed lost.

This prompted diplomats accredited to Zimbabwe to issue a statement warning MDC-Alliance against abusing the freedom brought about by the new dispensation. Mr Chamisa after losing the elections continued to threaten to cause anarchy in the country and has said he is mobilising his supporters to violently remove the democratically elected Government from power.

It is this abuse of democratic space that should be nipped in the bud if Zimbabweans are to continue enjoying their democracy. The abuse of freedom of expression saw MDC-Alliance supporters engaging in violent demonstrations on the streets of Harare on August 1, 2018, that left six people dead.

Government has repeatedly warned that it will not allow anarchy and those that dare incite anarchy will be dealt with in terms of the law.

We want at this juncture to implore Government to send a very clear message that abuse of the democratic space will not be tolerated. Those that abuse the freedom that Zimbabweans are enjoying are infringing on the rights of other citizens and therefore deserve to be punished.