MDC claims Vanguard has been disbanded

Nelson Chamisa’s MDC yesterday claimed it has disbanded a youth-led outfit called The Order of the Vanguard (Vanguard).

Describing it as “an otherwise peaceful and disciplined team of MDC youths”, Lovemore Chinoputsa, the secretary-general of the MDC Youth Assembly, said the Vanguard “has since been disbanded on the orders of the national council, the party’s supreme decision-making body in between congresses.”

This comes after service chiefs that testified at the ongoing Motlanthe Commission of Inquiry arrogated responsibility of the August 1, shootings that claimed six lives to the outfit.

Chinoputsa claimed the Vanguard was disbanded soon after the “unfortunate incidences” of intra-party violence in Buhera at the burial of the late MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who died on Valentines Day.

“The Vanguard was a team of youths that went about peaceful drills at party events but was misinterpreted by political detractors as a violent outfit. On the orders of the party leadership, the Vanguard was disbanded. What is missed is that the Vanguard was not a terrorist or military term but rather it is leftist diction that refers to ideologically correct party cadres. In any case, the Vanguard was not an armed outfit,” he said. DailyNews