Tsvangirai to report Mugabe to Sadc
By Jeffrey Muvundusi
BULAWAYO – MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai intends to write to the Sadc to register his discontent at what he says is President Robert Mugabe’s lawless running of the country.
Tsvangirai, who addressed journalists at the Bulawayo Press Club on Wednesday, singled out the shocking intimidation of the judiciary by Mugabe as one of the grave matters driving him to register his grievances to the regional body.
Mugabe recently declared that he would want to know the judge who would take up the pending case, led by former Zanu PF stalwarts Didymus Mutasa and Rugare Gumbo, challenging the legality of the December Zanu PF congress.
The 91-year-old’s controversial utterances were immediately interpreted by legal experts as a clear sign that he was interfering with the Bench and undermining the separation of powers between the Executive and the judiciary as espoused in the country’s constitution.
“We will continue to engage Sadc, because we are not an island. We will engage them even if we do not agree with everything that Sadc may propose,” Tsvangirai said.
“For instance, we do not agree with Sadc when it comes to the observer mission which came to a conclusion that the elections were not free and fair and went ahead to endorse the outcome of that election. I think it’s a contradiction,” he said.
Tsvangirai said despite the fact that Sadc is chaired by Mugabe, coupled with the regional body having made some controversial decisions in the past, they still have the right to draw its attention on ill-fated developments unfolding in the country.
“I will be writing to Sadc again reminding them of the deteriorating situation that is taking place in this country especially when the head of state is actually undermining judiciary process and the judiciary independence,” the opposition leader said.
In a statement to the Daily News this week, Information minister Jonathan Moyo defended Mugabe’s “misguided and uncalled for” utterances saying “what the president said is well within his legal rights in accordance with the rule of law given that he is the second respondent in the matter”.
Tsvangirai also condemned the Zanu PF terror tactics accusing them of kidnapping journalist-cum-activist Itai Dzamara whose whereabouts remain a mystery.
“When you have got a colleague abducted in broad daylight and we don’t know where he is. We are back again to a situation where these experiences are now common processes.”
“So it is in that context that I say the demon is back. We thought we had moved away from these kinds of activities. I can’t even mention that we have so many MDC activists whose disappearances and deaths have not been established and the perpetrators have not been brought to book,” he said.
He further condemned the incident where baton wielding anti-riot police on Wednesday besieged the party’s Harvest House headquarters where they allegedly demanded some baton sticks allegedly seized from their colleagues during an afternoon demonstration by party youths.
“This is unconstitutional, its unlawful they are returning to the police brutality and that should be condemned even by peace-loving Zimbabweans. I think the police have taken the law into their own hands and that should stop.” Daily News
