MDC youths to avenge vendor’s death

By Mugove Tafirenyika

MDC youths are threatening an Arab Spring-type of revolution to avenge the death of a 40-year-old vendor who was killed in Harare recently.

The vendor was fatally shot by an unnamed motorist who was wearing a scarf similar to the one often worn by President Emmerson Mnangagwa early this month.

“They killed ‘Dread’ who was a vendor but we must also remember that it once happened in 2011 in Tunisia where a vendor was killed and people revolted, this is what we are going to do, to come here every week to protest until Mnangagwa goes because he is the one responsible,” said Lovemore Chinoputsa, the MDC youth assembly secretary-general during the funeral wake for the vendor.

He was addressing party supporters who accompanied the vendor’s body for burial at his rural home in Karoi.

Former Tunisia leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to leave his country on January 14, 2011 after successful street protests.

The MDC has refused to accept Mnangagwa as leader following the disputed July 30 elections which they claim were rigged in favour of the ruling Zanu PF.

While the MDC blamed Zanu PF for the vendor’s death, some witnesses said the deceased had provoked his assailant when he refused to wash a car belonging to a “Mnangagwa’s supporter”.

Police spokesperson Paul Nyathi, however, said a 24-year-old parked his car at the corner of Angwa Street and Nkwame Nkrumah, Harare and left his two sisters in his
car while carrying out his business in the central business district.

Five men approached the sisters who were seated in the Sabaru car and demanded the car be removed from where it was parked.

The two sisters, according to police, called the owner of the car and, when he came back, a scuffle ensued, resulting in the owner of the car drawing out a pistol and firing a shot that resulted in the death of the vendor.

The mob then gathered and became violent, setting the Subaru vehicle on fire.

Police managed to arrest the 24-year-old car owner and the four men who had incited the violence.  Daily News.