PEOPLE living with disabilities have vowed not to vote for Zanu PF come 2018 after police disrupted their planned peaceful demonstration in Masvingo yesterday.
By Tatenda Chitagu
Initially, the police had cleared the demonstration by the Disability Amalgamation Community Trust (Dact), but made an about-turn an hour before and detained the organisation’s executive director, Henry Chivhanga, for close to four hours.
Chivhanga was released a few minutes before the start of the protest march when many of the participants had chickened out. Only a handful of the protesters remained.
Masvingo provincial police spokesperson Inspector Charity Mazula was not reachable for comment yesterday.
“The police summoned me at around 8:30 in the morning and told me that the demo could not go ahead. They said people with a different agenda could join the demo.
“They detained me up to about 11am when the demo was supposed to start and most of our members, being of a nervous disposition, had already chickened out because of security reasons, as some are hearing and visiaully-impaired and, therefore, could not stand police brutality,” Chivhanga said.
He said it was baffling that the police had stopped them from commemorating the International Week of the Deaf which is held worldwide. “The march was part of the commemorations of the United Nations (UN) Week of the Deaf and it is quite surprising that we were not granted the permission when able-bodied people are allowed. This shows how discriminatory the police are,” he said.
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Chivhanga said out of 2 million people living with disabilities, 800 000 are eligible voters and they will encourage them not to vote for Zanu PF.
“Nobody takes us as humans. So what we will do is that our constituency of 800 000 voters will not vote for Zanu PF in the next elections. We will not vote for a government that does not recognise us,” he said.
Dact legal and projects co-coordinator Cover Mugwadi said the ban showed that the Zanu PF regime was now paranoid to the extent of being afraid of the physically-challenged.
“It is a shame that the government is now afraid of the physically-challenged. They are now seeing shadows everywhere,” he said.
MDC-T national secretary for people living with disabilities and special needs, Dennis Mudzingwa, said the physically challenged were hit hardest by the economic crisis prevailing in the country.
“The Zanu PF regime has failed to deliver and we are the hardest hit constituency. Many of us have turned to begging and some of the beggars have taken the begging bowl to South Africa. [President Robert] Mugabe should be ashamed for exporting beggars,” Mudzingwa said.
Dact is demanding the observance of the Disabled Persons Act of 1992, as well as a disabled quota in educational institutions.
