SOME ugly scenes flared at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts after Makomborero Haruzivishe was on April 6 jailed for 14 months on charges of inciting violence and resisting police arrest.
The whistling and resisting police arrest charges are subtly connected with Impala Car Hire.
Impala, in July last year, found itself in trouble after its hired vehicle, a double-cab Ford Ranger, was allegedly used in the abduction of a then journalism student, Tawanda Muchehiwa (22), by suspected State agents.
Muchehiwa was later left for dead at his Bulawayo parents’ home.
On the same day (April 6), youths acting for and on behalf of Haruzivishe allegedly confronted police officers after their man was sentenced to an effective 14 months by magistrate Judith Taruvinga.
The youths still harboured in meting out instant justice on the law enforcement agents.
The police officers, however, had already taken their positions at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts in anticipation.
Haruzivishe is MDC Alliance’s national executive committee member who previously had raided Impala Car Hire last year to demonstrate his ire at what he perceived as the late company owner’s overly interference in the country’s internal politics by virtue of his previous connection to the ruling Zanu PF party, suspiciously as a Central Intelligence Organisation officer.
The Haruzivishe case, therefore, was demonstrably political right from the outset.
And now this brings us to the question: Do MDC Alliance party activists ever learn or do they just act at the impetus or rash of the moment, blindly leading themselves into trouble with the country’s authorities?
Zimbabwe is a very strange country, indeed, and is sometimes marked by amateurish behaviour by those in the main opposition parties.
The last time an MDC-T top leader (then Morgan Tsvangirai) was personally out demonstrating alongside the people was in 2008.
This was immediately followed by the historical formation of the Government of National Unity.
Ever since, opposition’s top leadership has been active by way of remote control in all the other demonstrations.
Self-preservation now characterises the exact nature of the MDC Alliance’s top leadership.
The so-called president and vice-presidents of MDC Alliance, the men and women who are supposed to occupy the top eschelons of power and lead by example, remain ensconced or holed up in their safe havens or comfort zones, only to emerge giving solidarity speeches at rallies or elsewhere when it becomes convenient to them.
On a tweet sent on March 8, one contributor landed heavily on MDC Alliance’s top leadership:
“I hold the view that: The Zaka/Bvukururu tweet is WRONG.”
MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa had earlier responded in another tweet, saying circumstances beyond his control had made his availability at the sentencing of Haruzivishe in Harare – though while necessary – impossible.
In response to Chamisa above, the tweet further said:
“The message might be right, but the timing isn’t! The nation & world is focusing on @Makomborero’s incarceration.
“Thus, it materialises the (fallacy) that Party activists are on their own. Silence was golden.”
Accordingly, it remains clear in the eyes of neutral observes that the MDC Alliance lacks real men or those described by the late former President Robert Mugabe as amadoda sibili .
August 1, for instance, is again illustrative.
Then, the MDC Alliance had said to deploy youths or whoever was interested – into the streets of Harare – to demonstrate over what they deemed to be a 2018 stolen election.
The result was the wholesale slaughter of at least six persons by the Anselem Sanyatwa-led men – and no MDC Alliance top officials were ever present to ‘witness’ the occasion.
