By Lance Guma
Video footage has emerged exposing how ZANU PF relies on force marching poor vendors from Mbare Musika and nearby markets in Harare, to attend and fill up venues for party meetings, heroes acre burials and, most recently, so-called anti-sanctions rallies. When ZANU PF is holding a party function their violent youths can be seen in the video locking up the gates to the markets and forcing everyone to attend.
Small and medium scale business traders in Mbare are suffering huge financial losses as ZANU PF mobs decide when the markets open and when they close. This always depends on where ZANU PF wants to deploy the vendors as a ‘rented crowd’. The footage shows a fired up ZANU PF youth leader telling a small crowd of militants;
‘Our duty means we should get to work. This meeting has to be done today. Let the youths go now to collect people and bring them here.” The charged up militants rise from the ground where they were seated when being addressed and start chanting “Let’s go! Let’s go and fetch them!”
The video footage also shows ZANU PF youths marching in military formation while forcing people in and around the Mbare market area to go and attend an anti-sanctions rally. The rally in March this year was addressed by Youth Minister Saviour Kasukuwere. “If you refuse to go they slap you,” a victim is filmed saying.
On Independence Day (18 April) this year a similar campaign to force-march people to the ‘celebrations’ was rolled out. Another victim is filmed narrating what was happening. As a green bus passes by packed with people, some of whom were dangerously perched on the roof, he explains the chaos.
“Yes they are forcing people to go to the National Sports Stadium. There was a bus that was going around collecting people. As you can see, people have been forced to close the market because of the Independence celebrations.”
The burial of the late national hero Edgar Tekere also brought more misery for the market traders. ZANU PF youth leaders man the gates to the largest market in Mbare and decree that it will only open at 2pm. After the burial a menacing ZANU PF youth unlocks the gates and shouts “If you know that you didn’t go, don’t enter!”
In May SW Radio Africa reported how ZANU PF youths invaded Mbare, beating up and displacing suspected MDC-T supporters from their homes. The youths declared Mbare a no-go area, and left many of their victims homeless. Perceived MDC-T supporters running market stalls had goods looted and tables taken away.
We also received information the regime was planning on giving military training to some 70 000 youths under ‘Operation Return to ZANU’. The youths were being trained for two months outside Harare, at the Inkomo army barracks, before being deployed to terrorize perceived MDC-T supporters. SW Radio Africa
