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Columbus Mabika and Wallace Ruzvidzo
Government has noted with disgust, “insurgent rants” from a member of the opposition threatening to overthrow legitimate public authorities in the country, and will not hesitate to act, Secretary for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Mr Nick Mangwana has said.
Addressing a rally in Bikita over the weekend, MDC deputy chairman Mr Job Sikhala said his party will overthrow the Government before 2023, confirming the party’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2018 harmonised elections and the validation of the poll outcome by the country’s Constitutional Court (Concourt), regional and international election observer missions.
“We are a committed leadership that will give Zanu-PF headaches and (Amos) Chibaya was not lying or joking about the war and fight we are going to take to the doorsteps of Emmerson Mnangagwa. We are going to overthrow him before 2023, that is not a joke.”
Mr Mangwana said the undermining of a legitimate authority is a serious crime.
“Trying to overthrow a Government is subversive and Government will not hesitate to deploy the security institutions to constrain such abuse of democratic tenets and maintain the constitutional order,” he said.
“Zimbabwe is a peaceful country and that peace is not accidental. That status of a peaceful country will be maintained by ensuring those that threaten democracy and the liberal values adopted by the New Dispensation are tried and, if convicted, removed from society and put in places where they don’t pose a threat to the rest of civilised society.”
Mr Mangwana added: “Every country under the sun has places for miscreants and we would not hesitate make use of them to protect democracy and constitutionalism values which are highly esteemed in the New Dispensation.
“It is understandable that when before a crowd some get excitable and experience a rush of blood to the head. We urge them to demobilise that animal instinct and deploy their faculties located in the higher centres of their brains and embrace constitutional means of opposing the Government.”
He added that the utterances could have been a deliberate ploy to derail current re-engagement talks with the British government.
“We don’t rule out a deliberate effort to provoke the authorities into enforcing the law so as to get negative international attention at the time when the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is meeting the British Foreign Minister as well as the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Baroness Scotland, to advance Zimbabwe’s re-engagement and mainstreaming efforts. While we will not hesitate to enforce the law, we will not be baited to a predictable default.”
The MDC since its inception in 1999 has been cultivating a culture of violence and their agenda is to make the country ungovernable.
MDC founding president the late Morgan Tsvangirai on several occasions urged his supporters to use violence against political opponents.
In 2000, Mr Tsvangirai showed the violent culture of his party when he said former president Robert Mugabe should leave office outside an election or risk being removed violently.
In May while addressing a congress, current MDC leader Nelson Chamisa suggested that there will be bloodshed throughout the country after his party’s congress.
Nelson Chamisa went on to say the congress was a platform to assemble a team that will force Government to an early election using unspecified means despite the fact that the next general elections are only due in 2023, according to the country’s Constitution.
In January, MDC and its associates in the non-governmental sector, using social media, instigated violence that left a trail of destruction worth millions of dollars in Harare, Bulawayo and other cities after its hooligans barricaded roads, burnt cars and stormed schools where they beat up teachers. They looted supermarkets, stoned or torched police and private vehicles and buses. They also beat up police officers trying to ensure law and order.
Online Reporter