THE report published by the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) recently which says the opposition MDC-T was fingered as the most violent party in the month of September registering 36 cases of violence is without doubt confirmation of our long held view that the Western founded party is a violent entity.
Even though the report sought to put the ruling party ZANU PF in the same light as the MDC-T by claiming the revolutionary party had its fair share of violence during the period in question, it was a lame attempt.
The most important point to note though is ZPP’s definition of violence.
While ZPP believes that disagreements amount to violence, the MDC-T takes the cup as it inflicted physical harm on its targets.
“The MDC-T had 36 cases as the party moved to restructure its provinces while ZANU PF had 30 cases,” ZPP said in its report released recently.
“As has been the case in the last three months, the Midlands province has the highest number of violations at 68 cases followed by Mashonaland Central at 29 incidences.
“The MDC-T had the bulk of the incidents related to mismanagement of internal party democracy with ZANU PF following closely.”
What is baffling in the ZPP report is its failure to pinpoint where ZANU PF has been implicated in the said ‘violence’.
In recent weeks, there has been a concerted effort by NGOs to paint ZANU PF with the proverbial black brush.
In spite of this, the MDC-T has an impeccable record of perpetrating violence in the country.
History will show that in its formative stages the beleaguered party was formed on the back of violent demonstrations that rocked the country in the late 1990s.
This is captured in the original MDC Constitution where Article 3 specifically states that its main mandate was to overthrow ZANU PF from power, not to rule Zimbabwe.
Curiously it did not mention what it would do after gaining the power; neither did it explain how it intended to overthrow ZANU PF from power.
But the party’s leader Morgan Tsvangirai was more forthcoming on how they intended to overthrow President Robert Mugabe and ZANUPF from power.
Addressing a crowd on Workers Day on May 1, 2000 Tsvangirai said:
“What we would like to tell Mugabe today is, please go peacefully, if you don’t do that we will remove you violently!”
The MDC’s brutality had many peaks that included the brutal attack on their member Trudy Stevenson months after the infamous October 12, 2005 spilt.
The likes of Elton Mangoma would also suffer the violence under Tsvangirai’s loose canons.
Indeed this year Mangoma raised the issue of violence as one of the reasons he had to resign as MDC leader.
The result was a thorough bashing of Mangoma by Tsvangirai’s goons.
On March 17 2006, President Mugabe received credentials from Dr Andrew Pocock, then Britain’s new ambassador to Zimbabwe.
On this occasion President Mugabe made his famous call to the new envoy to help ‘build bridges’ between Zimbabwe and the UK in order to break the long standing impasse over land reforms.
Surprisingly on the same day, Tsvangirai’s MDC was beginning its two- day convention in Harare which would adopt a programme of further destabilising Zimbabwe.
Called ‘democratic resistance’, the programme aimed to sabotage the country and throw it into anarchy so that President Mugabe would be shown the exit door.
From March 2006, right up to March 2007, Tsvangirai and his faction of the MDC embarked on a whirlwind tour of Zimbabwe’s cities, all the time making it clear this was a build- up to the mass action.
An indicator of the rising Western belief in the inevitable success of his new strategy was a major prognosis published by Harvard’s African Policy Journal which projected the unseating of President Mugabe as foregone, urging the West to urgently prepare for a post- Mugabe era.
Revealingly titled “After Mugabe: Applying post- conflict recovery lessons to Zimbabwe”, the article, authored by two neo- liberal warrior policy advisors to the Bush administration, Todd Moss and Stewart Patrick, predicted ‘a major transition anytime’, with ‘change [coming] without much warning’.
It warned the US government and other donors against being ‘caught flat- footed’ by this change, urging them to ‘start planning now for possible responses to a transition in Zimbabwe’.
Describing Zimbabwe as a ‘post- conflict situation’, the paper intimated that such preliminary preparations would be ‘catalytic’ to the transition itself.
To date Zimbabwe is still being described as a post-conflict situation while the MDC-T continues on its violent trail.
Its true colours continue to come in the open by the day.
Let those with ears listen.