Chamisa furious over MDC arrests

Chamisa furious over MDC arrests
Published: 11 July 2019
OPPOSITION leader Nelson Chamisa yesterday came out guns blazing, accusing authorities of wanting to destroy the MDC following the arrests of high profile party officials over allegations of seeking to topple President Emmerson Mnangagwa from power.

This comes as there are growing calls for Mnangagwa and Chamisa to end their quarrelling and hold urgent talks aimed at extricating the country from its worsening economic rot.

It also comes after police arrested MDC vice chairperson and Zengeza West MP Job Sikhala as well as party youth assembly secretary general Gift Ostallos Siziba - over allegedly offensive comments that the two men made during rallies held last weekend.

"I don't understand why they want to persecute an innocent man. Why should they persecute Sikhala for speaking his mind? He is not an ordinary man, he must be treated as a civilised honourable member of parliament.

"An allegation does not make him a criminal. He loves his country and I hope that he will be treated with dignity," Chamisa told journalists during a tour of Tariro Youth Centre  in Harare - ahead of its opening by Mnangagwa today.

Earlier, Chamisa had addressed MDC supporters on social media, rallying behind his firebrand colleague whom he said "was a well-meaning" politician.

"He expresses himself in very passionate ways. He does so because he loves Zimbabwe.

"Mnangagwa must know that … no dictator lasts forever. There's no dictator who stays in power forever," the MDC boss said on Twitter.

Siziba was nabbed after he apparently tore into Mnangagwa and also threatened to embark on mass demonstrations.

"We want to warn … Mnangagwa that we are not scared of you chief. We're coming for you and we will unleash a programme of demonstrations here in Zimbabwe until we usher in a democratic breakthrough led by Nelson Chamisa," Siziba is alleged to have said.

On his part, Sikhala was arrested for allegedly declaring that the MDC would overthrow Mnangagwa before the next elections, to be held in 2023.

"The war and the fight, we're going to take to the doorsteps of …Mnangagwa. We're going to overthrow him before 2023. That's not a joke," he is alleged to have said during his weekend address in Bikita.

Chamisa said the arrests of his colleagues had exposed Mnangagwa and his government for "mimicking the old ways" of ousted former president Robert Mugabe's regime.

Zimbabwe is currently in the throes of a huge economic crisis which has seen the prices of basic goods, fuel and medicines rising sharply.

As a measure of how things have recently fallen apart in the country, last month the government announced that official inflation was now at nearly 100 percent - the highest in the country since Zimbabwe scrapped the then worthless local dollar in 2009.

Mnangagwa swept to power amid much hope among the generality of the country's citizens - who had endured nearly four decades of hell under Mugabe's ruinous rule.

But the task facing the 76-year-old Zanu-PF leader, of rebuilding Zimbabwe's shattered economy and lifting the quality of life of its long suffering people, has so far proven to be a tad too onerous for him and his misfiring Cabinet team.
- dailynews
Tags: Chamisa,

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