Zanu PF guns for #ThisFlag pastor
By Mugove Tafirenyika
President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF, reeling from swelling public anger over its disastrous stewardship of the State over the past 36 years, is training its guns on pressure group #Tajamuka/Sesjikile and unbowed clergyman #ThisFlag Pastor Evan Mawarire, as it desperately seeks to quell the growing citizen unrest.
The clear indication of Zanu PF’s intention to smash all opposition to its much-criticised rule comes as the government faces another potentially debilitating showdown with civil servants, whose July pay has been delayed for the second month running.
Addressing thousands of bussed youths and women in Harare yesterday, the ruling party’s political commissar for the youth league, Innocent Hamandishe, warned ominously that they would soon be taking the law into their own hands to “deal” with anti-government protestors.
“There are people calling themselves Tajamuka who are trying to intimidate our president, but we want to warn them that next time we are going to ask (police commissioner general Augustine) Chihuri and his police to step aside and let us deal with them if pastors continue to intimidate our leader.
“If you read the Bible it says the Church must respect the country’s leaders and when they were making noise we kept quiet because we did not want to fight the Church. But we realise that you want politics and we invite you to come out in the open and form your parties without hiding behind the Church.
“Pastors don’t rule the country. Their job is to pray for peace. If you want to rule Zimbabwe you have to wait until 2018 and we will beat you in the ballot hands down. Our president was not voted into office by Tajamuka,” Hamandishe said.
This follows controversial remarks by Home Affairs minister, Ignatius Chombo, who told a Zanu PF meeting in Gweru two weeks ago that the party’s supporters should break up protests.
”I don’t want to always deploy the police to look for people who go on strike. It is you the youths and members of the women’s league who should go and look for shops that fail to open,” he said ominously then.
Yesterday’s threat of violence by Zanu PF youths also comes a day after Mugabe himself roundly denounced Mawarire and other activist church leaders.
“The Mawarires, I don’t even know him … They are not part of us as we try to live together. If they don’t want to live with us they should go to those countries that are sponsoring them.
“I don’t know if he is (Mawarire) a man of religion. A man of religion will speak the biblical truth. First Corinthians, what does it say? Love one another. So beware these men of God.
“Not all of them are true preachers of the bible. I don’t know whether they are serving God. Well, we spell God G.O.D. They spell in reverse (DOG),” he railed during the burial of former permanent secretary Charles Utete at the Heroes Acre on Tuesday.
Mawarire helped to organise arguably the biggest general strike in the history of the country when millions of fed up Zimbabweans heeded his call to stay away from work just over a week ago.
Contacted for comment, MDC youth president Happymore Chidziva told the Daily News yesterday that it was “regrettable” that Zanu PF youths were resorting to violence “instead of urging its leadership to fix the dying economy”.
“Crushing peaceful demonstrations will not give this failed government money to pay civil servants. The problems that are affecting citizens will not go away simply because you have threatened to use violence against them.
“As MDC youths we will continue to be on the side of the people against this dictatorship. No amount of intimidation will stop us,” Chidziva said. Daily News
