HOME Affairs Minister Kazembe Kazembe has warned protesters of the Friday anti-corruption protests that State security agents will descend heavily on them.
Speaking to the media at his Mukwati government building offices in Harare, Kazembe accused the opposition MDC Alliance of planning the mass demonstrations.
However, Jacob Ngarivhume the president of Transform Zimbabwe and the main convener of the Friday protests is in remand prison after he was arrested on charges of inciting public violence. Freelance journalist Hopewell Chin’ono is also in remand prison facing similar charges.
Kazembe, who was flanked by Police Commissioner-General Godwin Matanga, condemned the organisers of the protests of calling for the demonstrations in the wake of a spike in the Covid-19 cases and deaths.
He further claimed the mass protests were also an illegal attempt by the West and the MDC Alliance to remove a constitutionally elected Zanu PF government and to reverse the outcome of the 2018 elections.
“The (State) security services will descend upon any unlawful activity on the 31st of July. They will have a rude awakening come 31 July, when they will learn that the security services are solid in their purpose and resolve to preserve constitutionalism and democracy in Zimbabwe, something that the MDC Alliance is aiming to destroy,” said Kazembe.
“Experience has shown that demonstrations organised by the opposition and their Western handlers have consistently and by design degenerated into violence thereby occasioning loss of life, injury to people, destruction of and or damage to property among other ills.
“The planned purported demonstrations of July 31, 2020, have already exhibited ingredients of violence.”
He also said the demonstration had nothing to do with the current challenges being faced by Zimbabweans.
“The 31 July 2020 planned insurrection, masquerading under misleading hashtag themes such as #July31, #PeoplePower, #ShutdownZimbabwe, #CorruptionMustGo are, in actual fact, an attempt to reverse the outcome of the 30 July 2018 harmonised general elections as shown by the real main hashtags in use: #ZANUPFMustGo and #EDMustFall,” he added.
“Clearly, this is a criminal enterprise whose true intention has nothing to do with various innocuous problems in the country, but to further the opposition’s long-held wish to come to power through the overthrow of a legitimately elected Government.”
