Utterances by MDC-T secretary-general Tendai Biti that his party supporters would hit back if attacked by Zanu PF militias make for yet another disturbing development by that party in recent days.
Last week the party shocked its followers when it literally signed a pact with Zanu PF agreeing to let off the hook people that had committed human rights atrocities before February 2009.
Many former opposition party supporters who were at the receiving end of political violence that rocked the country during election time since Independence, mostly in the bloody 2008 presidential re-run election period, were angry with this betrayal by their party.
Victims of the 2005 human rights tragedy called Murambatsvina were also surprised that a party that had over the years promised to make right their ruined lives and punish perpetrators, had decided to have their case swept under the carpet.
Relatives of the thousands that perished in the Gukurahundi massacres too found it difficult to believe their only hope for redress had all of a sudden died on the altar of political expediency. Many thousands of people could have reviewed their political stance following last week’s political deal crafted by negotiators from the three political parties that make up the Global Political Agreement, Zanu PF, MDC-T and MDC.
Tendai Biti is one of two officials that negotiated this deal on behalf of the MDC-T and therefore, according to Zanu PF’s Patrick Chinamasa, agreed that the Human Rights Commission, which the people of Zimbabwe expected to deal with the issues of Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina and the 2008 blood-letting, would not have the mandate to investigate these issues.
Now Biti tells the world that this time around his supporters would retaliate if attacked by Zanu PF militias. Biti, like everyone else, is very much aware of the political matrix in this country where a certain political party enjoys the support of State security apparatus such as the army and the police.
Commanders of these institutions have clearly declared their allegiance to that political party whose militias Biti threatens to beat up using civilians armed with stones!
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Biti is very much aware that the 2008 political mayhem involved armed soldiers and police and that supporters of his party, like Tonderai Ndira, were abducted in broad daylight and murdered by people whom witnesses said appeared to be armed members of the State secret service.
Up to now no arrests have been made in connection with Ndira’s brutal murder and Biti’s party cannot and has not done anything about it except to agree that Ndira’s killers cannot be investigated by the Human Rights Commission!
So what has changed now, or by the time we go for elections next year, to make Biti think that under the new circumstances, his supporters would be brave enough to fight back abductions that come at night?
All Biti is doing is finding an excuse for those that he is threatening to spark a provocation and then deal with his supporters — June 2008-style. Biti and his party have no means to stop the killings, beatings and displacements that the secretary-general is inviting upon their supporters.
What Zimbabwe least needs is a repeat of the 2008 nightmare and Biti must not start inciting that by threatening to do what he cannot do.
