Change is coming – MDC

the party would send delegations of senior personnel to friendly governments in the region and abroad to explain the country’s political crisis, introduce the party’s new leadership and outline the way forward following the recent MDC congress. The party would simultaneously reorganise its structures in an effort to prepare internally for the next chapter of the struggle for freedom in Zimbabwe, said Chamisa. “We need re-invigorated party structures to sustain the planned active resistance.” For security reasons he would not elaborate on what form such resistance would take “We know this dictatorship well,” he said. “And for strategic reasons we cannot divulge any details at this stage. But the people of Zimbabwe know what a struggle we are engaged in and will be ready to respond when the time is right.”

In his acceptance speech to the congress on March 19, MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai, announced a new season of resistance. This was immediately followed by unveiled threats from Zanu (PF) heavies, who called for his arrest for treason. The minister for home affairs, Kembo Mohadi, said: “This treachery has now gone beyond all forms of decency and must be stopped. The courts must take note of Morgan Tsvangirai’s open call for violence which, in essence, constitutes high treason.” Chamisa emphasised that Tsvangirai had never advocated violence in any form and had always insisted that active resistance against the Mugabe regime should take the form of mass, peaceful, protests.

Zanu (PF) spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira and the party’s political commissar Elliot Manyika last week tried to evoke the spectre of war to scare opposition groups from taking mass action. “Those who reject the legal and democratic way of running the government and choose confrontation will be confronted by the long arm of the state (sic). Zanu (PF) alone has the gruelling experience of war, and strongly urges the armchair talkers to shut up. War is not like a picnic or a dinner party, it is blood, sweat, injuries and death,” Shamuyarira and Manyika said in a joint statement. Earlier State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa told the CIO-owned Financial Gazette that the government would crush any mass protests against the administration.