WHEN the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) president Peter Mutasa was waylaid by the discredited ‘Pastor’ Evan Mawarire on Sunday to announce there would be a national ‘shutdown’, those blessed with foresight were immediately seized with the fact that the said programme would be replete with violence.

Indeed, gory scenes of violence that characterised the so-called shutdown not only confirmed those fears, but further buttressed the compelling fact that the ZCTU is an entity pursuing a political agenda.

Cars and vehicles were burnt, those going into the CBD were stopped and harassed by the marauding ZCTU hired goons and MDC youths while shops were looted by the mob.

The untold story was that the ZCTU and the MDC Alliance wanted the ‘shutdown’ to attract international attention, especially as President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa left for a four-nation tour of Eastern Europe to secure economic deals for the country.

Already, Alrosa, one of the world’s largest diamond mining companies, has announced that it will be starting operations in Zimbabwe next month.

There was a stampede at Western embassies in Harare as the frustrated ZCTU officials and their MDC Alliance counterparts sought to squeeze donor funds for their doomed project.

And as it became clear that the country’s security forces were on top of the situation, MDC Alliance youths set their party headquarters, the Harvest House, on fire, in a futile bid to incite an international community backlash.

Again that failed.

It is apparent what happened this week was anarchy.

The law is clear and it must be used without fear or favour.

When you block roads and burn tyres, stoning any moving object in sight, it simply means that the people have not heeded your call to stay away — you are simply co-opting them.

There is nothing democratic about that.

There is equally nothing peaceful about that.

Democracy is being abused, wantonly.

That has to stop!

We need strong arm tactics when dealing with mavericks behind that anarchy and the moment has come for Government to do just that.

Then you have trade unions and political leaders quietly hiding in the comfort of their homes and hotels pretending that they have nothing to do with what happened on Monday!

It is time to take decisive action against these perpetrators.

They should be arrested and charged with treason, arson or whatever that the law provides insofar as charging these people is concerned.

Let us go back in history and unravel how the MDC uses people to pursue their inane political agenda.

Just before the March 29 2008 plebiscite, the then campaign director for the late opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Ian Makone, unashamedly told the media that his party’s campaign would thrive on galvanising the masses to reject any outcome in which the MDC lost the polls.

Said Makone:

“The lesson from (the election of) 2002 is we didn’t plan for after the vote. Everyone stayed at home and said we will go to the courts. 

What happened in Kenya was that they knew there would be fraud and they were ready. We will be out in the streets celebrating when the polls close. 

It can turn into a protest easily. Zimbabweans are angry; they are desperate; they are ready to protest. It’s the tipping point we are planning for.”

Prior to that shocking revelation, on May 14 2007, Australia announced it would spend US$18 million backing critics of ZANU PF with over 90 percent of that money to be spent in the run-up to those elections. 

In a May 20 2008 article, writer Steve Gowans explained how the MDC used violence to coerce people to vote for it.

He speaks:

“The documentation of violence against MDC supporters has been gathered by the US Embassy in Harare, which is hardly neutral and has an interest in discrediting ZANU PF to bring its favoured vehicle, the MDC, to power. Human Rights Watch (HRW), which is dominated by former members of the US foreign policy establishment, has also been involved. But even HRW acknowledges the violence isn’t exclusive to supporters of ZANU PF. Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that…MDC supporters had burned homes of known ZANU PF supporters and officials. 

Louise Arbour, the UN’s top human rights official, who, in previous jobs has invariably sided with the US and Britain, notes that the information she has ‘received suggests an emerging pattern of political violence’ that is not exclusively inflicted by supporters of ZANU PF. 

Kingsley Mamabolo, a senior South African official who led the region’s observer team for the March 29 elections agrees that violence is ‘taking place on both sides…’, as do human rights and doctors groups in Harare, most of which have Western sources of funding. 

Paul Themba Nyathi, a civil rights lawyer and MDC member, says that ‘Tsvangirai’s followers seem to be saying to themselves that they can win elections by beating people and by using the crudest methods of intimidation’.

This has largely escaped the attention of the media, he adds, ‘…because the big prize is still to rid the country of Mugabe’. Police arrested 58 opposition activists on May 9 on suspicion of setting fire to the homes of ZANU PF members. On May 14, they arrested 50 ZANU PF activists.”

We leave it there.

Let those with ears listen.