Biti calls on Zimbabweans to re-organise

HARARE – MDC Renewal Team secretary general, Tendai Biti, on Thursday called on Zimbabweans top reorganise through protests so as to solve current social, political and economic problems.

He was speaking at Sapes Trust in Harare. “The citizen must reorganise as we have reduced Zimbabwe’s politics to binary politics,” Biti said.

“The people of Zimbabwe should stand up and not outsource the struggle. Let us stop pointing fingers and organise ourselves in a smart manner. We need to know what our alternative on the economy is.

“We need to have a clear position on what we are saying about electoral reforms because we cannot go into the 2018 election without genuine reforms. We need to have a clear policy on social delivery,” he added.

He said the people of Zimbabwe should not be scared of holding peaceful demonstrations as it was enshrined in the country’s Constitution.

“The question is what are we doing and we must stop outsourcing this struggle to anyone. We must be united by one thing, that the catastrophe is Zanu PF and its legacy of 35 years,” said Biti.

He supported a recent suggestion by his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, to hold a national convergence summit to debate the way forward as Zimbabwe heaves under high unemployment, a severe liquidity crunch and polarisation.

“We need to rethink, introspect and accept the missed opportunities. We need a national convention where we sit down as citizens, as the oppressed people of Zimbabwe and locate the national crisis. Let’s form a coalition of democrats, unite on the issue of rates boycotts and not participating in elections without genuine reforms.

“We need to have an alternative blueprint and form a coalition on the realignment of the national Constitution. Every citizen should occupy their space,” said Biti.

He also condemned the use of hate speech and language by Zanu PF politicians and in the state media.

“The existence of hate speech and language of Rwanda in 1994, which later led to death of nearly one million people. Here in Zimbabwe, we crush the opposition, we crush gamatox and we are feeding into the zero option,” he said.

“We have an economic and leadership crisis, structural deficiency and an inefficient government. There is no production in the industrial sites and massive job losses. This is the return of depression.

“Yet the government has departed from the elementary rule of you eat what you kill. But the Zanu PF government is behaving as if it has killed an elephant yet it has killed a rat,” he said.

“The Minister of Finance should actually be called a wages clerk because his only duty now is to pay wages to the civil servants,” said Biti. The Zimbabwean