By Bernard Chiketo
Former Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe on Thursday led thousands of MDC supporters in a demonstration against President Robert Mugabe’s inept government as MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai addressed marchers over the phone.
The MDC honcho, who is recovering from an operation failed to make it after police drew back the date for the demonstration but made a brief telephone address before Khupe delivered his main speech.
More than 4 000 demonstrators painted the eastern border city red as they marched against job losses, corruption, a crippling liquidity crunch and ruinous fiscal policies among a host of other economic ills.
The turn-up exceeded expectations for a midweek demonstration, laying bare the country’s high unemployment.
Tsvangirai said the leading opposition party will continue to pressure government with demonstrations until it gives in to their demands.
“We have and we will continue to invoke section 59 of the Zimbabwe Constitution which guarantees our right to demonstrate against failures by the Zanu PF government,” Tsvangirai said.
Slamming Mugabe’s government as corrupt and illegitimate Tsvangirai said mass action was a key ingredient to “reclaiming our destiny which is firmly in our hands”.
He said with the bulk of citizens living off a dollar a day, Zimbabwe was now a failed state.
“Our beloved Zimbabwe has virtually collapsed into a failed state . . . more than 80 percent of the population is living in abject poverty, misery, and destitution.
“Today, the all too obvious Zanu PF induced poverty is the greatest threat to the well-being of the people of Zimbabwe,” Tsvangirai said.
He said the nation “deserve to be governed by a legitimate, responsible, accountable and transparent government” all of which Zanu PF lacked.
MDC secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora said demonstrations were only a part of an array of actions the opposition party will undertake to force government to comply with their expectations.
“We have other means to bring Zanu PF to its knees.
“After these series of demonstrations, we will be embarking on another sustained programme.
“We will roll out this programme after we have notified those who are sustaining corruption and are being sustained by corruption,” Mwonzora said.
The Mutare demonstration is the main opposition party’s third mass protestation against deteriorating conditions that many attribute to Mugabe’s failure to steer the country from the “messy he created through populist policies”.
Tsvangirai’s spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka said the massive turnout showed that the MDC is a party to reckon with.
“President Tsvangirai is in high spirits and was looking forward to attending the Manicaland protest march on Saturday were it not for the incestuous relationship between Zanu PF and the police who conspired to create a competing event by Zanu PF on the same day.
“But the event is going ahead because it is a provincial event and in any case, the absence of the president does not affect party programmes.”
Tsvangirai and the MDC, who are credited with steadying the country’s economy between 2009 and 2013 when they shared executive responsibilities with Zanu PF then, have mounted mega-demonstrations in Harare and Bulawayo over the past two months.
Despite loud denials by the governing party in public, insiders have said the demonstrations shook Zanu PF to its core, after the main opposition brought both Harare and Bulawayo’s central business districts to a halt during the marches.
“Were it not for the shenanigans by the police to play around with the dates of the march,…Tsvangirai would have attended the march.
“Remember, Manicaland is the scene of the crime; the site of the $15 billion diamonds that were stolen to fatten the pockets of the chefs and to pay Nikuv to steal the people’s mandate in July 2013,” Tamborinyoka said. Daily News
