MATABELELAND activists have hit back at Zanu PF over its chilling threats against the Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP), saying this showed that the ruling party was against a multi-party democracy.
Zanu PF national political commissar Munyaradzi Machacha this week said MRP’s agenda constituted a declaration of war against Zimbabwe.
He made the remarks at the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology orientation workshop for local authority officials in Harare.
Freedom Alliance party chairperson Abednico Ndebele said Machacha’s remarks were shocking.
“MRP is a political party and organisation that is a legal entity on its own, but when we hear a governing party making such threats, it is not that it wants to destroy the party, but the people that it leads,” Ndebele said.
Gukurahundi survivor Ben Moyo said Machacha’s remarks emboldened MRP activists.
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“The State needs to be tolerant of divergent views and not make matters out of them,” he said.
MRP national youth league executive member Mkhululi Jele said Machacha’s threats were a clear strategy to push ahead with a one-party State agenda.
“Your attempts to suppress us and your declared intention to ‘Crush MRP’ will only fortify our unshakeable resolve,” Jele said.
“We will not be swayed, we will not be deterred and we will not be silenced. Our determination will intensify, fuelled by the righteousness of our cause and the indomitable spirit of our people.”
Bulawayo senior resident and development practitioner Thembelani Dube said the Constitution provides for freedoms of association and assembly.
“The same Constitution allows for multiparty democracy and the right of people to choose their preferred public representatives, who are either deployed by their respective parties or as independents,” Dube said.
“For Zimbabwe to develop, all must respect the rights enshrined in the Constitution of the republic.
“As Zimbabweans , we monitor and evaluate such sentiments pregnant with threats with shock and disbelief as they are an affront to the very freedoms enshrined in the Constitution that we crafted as a nation to safeguard against such.”
President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his predecessor the late Robert Mugabe have also issued chilling threats against the MRP.