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Nobleman Runyanga Correspondent

On 2 May, CCC official Job Sikhala screamed on his twitter handle claiming that the police and some Zanu PF members had allegedly violently disrupted the opposition party’s door to door campaign in

Ward 7 in Chitungwiza ahead of the by-election in the same ward to replace Lovemore Maiko, who was recalled by MDC-T leader, Douglas Mwonzora at the beginning of March.

Sikhala claimed that “Police officers came in tore (sic) with crystal meth (Mutoriro) – drunken Zanu PF and attacked us when we were engaged in a peaceful door to door campaign for our Ward 7 Council by-election candidate, Lovemore Maiko.

They attacked us with baton sticks, rubber bullets, logs, stones, and axes.” Those who are familiar with Sikhala both on twitter and in real life know the politician for his excessive drama and political attention-seeking behaviour.

They were, therefore, not surprised by his alarmistic and hyperbolic tweet. They were also not surprised that a whole legislator who is supposed to actively use the Parliament platform to fight drug abuse does not know something as basic as the fact that crystal meth is not taken through drinking, but smoking.

Fierce factional fights on display

Those who are familiar with what happened on the ground indicated that a group of CCC youths led by the party’s interim deputy spokesperson, Gift Siziba, arrived from Harare and tried to join the Chitungwiza group in the door to door campaign, but Sikhala, who regards himself as the opposition party’s godfather in Chitungwiza, would have none of it.

This resulted in intra-party fighting. Even the videos of the event which did rounds on social media did not show any Zanu PF member participating in the political melee.

Sikhala dragged in the name of Zanu PF just to besmirch it and to distract the world’s attention from the simmering conflict in his “new” party.

The whole world knows that Siziba is a Chamisa ally and Sikhala, who is one of the kingpins of the party’s Tendai Biti faction, felt that his factional turf had been invaded.

Zanu PF knows and has over the years demonstrated that political power, at whatever level, is earned from the electorate.

The ruling party, therefore, has no business to physically fight the opposition for a local authority seat. It fights by addressing the electorate’s needs such as trafficable roads and access to clean water. Like wine, it has matured in politics over the nearly 60 years that it has been around.

The Vanguard still active

The MDC in its various factions and formations has always been known for violence. Violence has always been part of the opposition outfit’s DNA.

Even the late former MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai endorsed, espoused and used violence to fight ZANU PF, Government and internal adversaries.

The world still vividly remembers Tsvangirai’s 30 September 2000 shocking threat: “What we want to tell (the late former President, Robert) Mugabe today is to please go peacefully. If you don’t want to go, we will remove you violently.”

When the then MDC-T Secretary General, Tendai Biti and the then MDC-T Deputy Treasurer General, Elton Mangoma pushed for leadership renewal in the MDC-T in 2014 following the party’s debilitating loss to Zanu PF in the 2013 harmonised general elections, Tsvangirai sought to silence them by using the party’s violent youths known as the Order of the Vanguard (Vanguard).

On 15 February 2014, soon after Tsvangirai had finished a one-day meeting with the 210 MDC-T district chairpersons, Mangoma was assaulted by about 20 Vanguard members outside Harvest House, while the party’s leader watched.

Tsvangirai did not even attempt to restrain the violent youths.

Promise Mkwananzi, who was the then MDC-T Youth Assembly Secretary General, and Biti escaped with kicks and slaps.

Mangoma’s shirt was torn in the process.

Tsvangirai brooked no dissenting voices and stood ready to use violence to deal with them.

When Tsvangirai’s then deputy, Dr Thokozani Khupe refused to support his idea of a coalition of opposition political parties as a strategy to improve their chances of beating Zanu PF during the 2018 polls, the former dispatched some Vanguard members and attacked her in her Bulawayo base in August 2017.

Who would forget how when Nelson Chamisa forcefully took over the party on

Tsvangirai’s death and used the same Vanguard to ward off Dr Khupe from claiming leadership of the party as she was the rightful heiress to Tsvangirai as she had been elected during the party’s October 2014 congress?

In March 2007, Tsvangirai, the then National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chairperson, Professor Madhuku and others defied a three-month Government ban on protests by holding what they termed a prayer rally in Highfield.

The event was stopped by the police and Tsvangirai, Prof Madhuku and others arrested and detained.

In protest and retaliation for Tsvangirai’s arrest, a shadowy group of youths from his party curiously named Democratic Resistance Committees (DRCs) went on a rampage petrol-bombing police stations in Harare, Gweru and Mutare among other towns and cities.

All this happened with Tsvangirai’s tacit approval.

In February 2018, Dr Khupe and the then Secretary General, Douglas Mwonzora were saved by the Police during Tsvangirai’s funeral at the Tsvangirai’s Buhera home when members of the Vanguard had herded the two into a rondavel and were about to set it alight.

They, however, were not done with Khupe. Like Tsvangirai before him, in early March 2018, Chamisa dispatched a group of violent youths to attack Dr Khupe to push her out of the party’s Bulawayo provincial office.

The incident resulted in the injury of over 15 people and damage to Dr Khupe’s motor vehicle.

While giving an address when the MDC Alliance was renamed to CCC on 24 January 2022, the party’s leader, Nelson Chamisa said that the party was doing away with everything related to the MDC Alliance. Most people hoped that this included the party’s tradition of violence. In November 2018, the then MDC Alliance Youth Assembly Secretary General, Lovemore Chinoputsa was quoted in the 14 November 2018 edition of nehandaradio.com saying that the party’s violent youth group, the Vanguard “has since been disbanded on the orders of the national council, the party’s supreme decision-making body in between congresses.”

While disbanding the violent group was laudable, it should be noted that the decision was not out of morality or realisation of the party’s bad ways.

The party’s rowdy and excitable youths were implicated by the Motlanthe Commission into the 1 August 2018 incidents for needlessly protesting on Harare’s streets over alleged delays in the announcement of Presidential election results by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) at the time that the national election management body was still collating and announcing results.

The decision to disband the violent group was just a face saver for a political party whose members caused the 1 August 2018 unfortunate incidents, which led to the sad loss of six lives.

Although Chamisa and his party desperately wish the world to believe that they are a “new” party, the behaviour of their party members shows that nothing has changed about the political outfit except its name, slogan and official colour.

The incident of 2 May 2022 in Chitungwiza’s Ward 7 demonstrated that although CCC makes shrill claims that the MDC Alliance is dead, the MDC violence streak remains very strong in the party’s youths.

Barbarians seeking civilised office

The incident that occurred in Chitungwiza on 2 May 2022 showed that the CCC is a barbaric organisation that resolves issues using violence.

It is interesting that the same barbaric lot is seeking State power to rule civilised Zimbabweans.

Fortunately, not all Zimbabweans are stupid. Many have since seen the light.

This is the reason why the opposition has failed to unseat Zanu PF for the past 22 years and is unlikely to ever do so.

The barbaric lot from the MDC/CCC has superintended over the country’s 28 urban local authorities out of 32 cities and towns and their record is there for all to see.

Successive MDC/CCC councils have succeeded at failing to run the country’s cities and towns and reduced them to slums.

The councillors see nothing wrong with the heaps of uncollected refuse strewn all over residential areas and city and town centres.

As the 2023 harmonised general elections draw near, the electorate should use their vote to put into office candidates and political parties with clear delivery track records.

Colours may be attractive to the eye, but the electorate should assess political parties and candidates using their minds. They should separate barbaric political parties and candidates from civilised ones.