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Herald Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) has reiterated that it has nothing to do with any illegal July 31 demonstration, as has been falsely peddled on social media platforms, and will not be involved in anti-people activities or political shenanigans.

In a statement, the ZDF said it did not involve itself “in anti-people activities designed to achieve anti-Government political and economic objectives by some malcontents within our citizenry”.

Fake social media messages have produce a plethora of disinformation saying the defence forces supported a demonstration this week and that the defence forces helped the MDC-T takeover Morgan Tsvangirai House, and all have been dismissed as rubbish by the ZDF.

In a statement, Defence Forces Commander General Philip Valerio Sibanda said the allegations were just figments of the social media websites imaginations.

“The Zimbabwe Defence Forces notes with concern the concerted efforts by some sections of the private media, which are bent on dragging the ZDF into their political scheming. This is evidenced by an online news item titled, ‘Military backing demo’ published by Transform Zimbabwe on Chimurenga Radio on 13 July 2020. On the same day there was another publication by ZimEye in their article, ‘The army has been used to settle politics’ and that the ZDF and ‘other security structures are literally used to silence, remove and oppress the people of Zimbabwe in a bid to keep ZANU PF in power’. Further to this scheming, ZimEye on 5 June 2020, claimed that the ZDF had helped the MDC-T, led by Thokozani Khupe to reclaim Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House, formerly Harvest House, from the MDC-Alliance.

“These claims and assertions are the work of very fertile imagination of the authors of these articles, which members of the public should dismiss with the contempt they deserve. They are aimed at unfairly using the security establishment to drum up support for their planned illegal anti-Government protests.”