Threat to assassinate Tsvangirai

The party has presented a petition, prepared by Mugabe’s youth league to Zanu (PF) spokesman Rugare Gumbo. Classified as secret and sent to Mugabe, it contains a plot to assassinate Tsvangirai. The MDC leader mysteriously stayed away from an MDC rally held at Zimbabwe Grounds on Saturday, where frustrated Zanu (PF) youths attempted to cause mayhem.
“The Zanu (PF) threat on party President and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is a blatant attack not only on his person and office, but a reprehensible criminal act that threatens the inclusive government and the Global Political Agreement, the MDC said in a loaded statement.
“The MDC calls upon the police to immediately arrest the Zanu (PF) youths who have threatened the office and person of the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe,” the party said. The MDC statement focused on the five-page annex to the main petition
which was presented by the Zanu (PF) youth league in a campaign to demand the removal of so-called sanctions (in reality targeted measures) imposed on Zanu (PF) officials.
The annex reportedly outlined responses of varying intensity to Tsvangirai if he failed to get the measures lifted within
one month. The entire memorandum was reportedly several-pages long and should be made public in order to stop the alleged plot to kill Tsvangirai, a senior MDC official said. He insisted disclosure of the classified petition would neither be harmful to the MDC nor beneficial to Zanu (PF).
“The petition is illegal. Its aim is to take Tsvangirai’s life,” he said. The MDC statement said: “The MDC takes these threats seriously as several attempts have been made on the life of the Prime Minister. History is littered with serious attempts to eliminate him which have not been taken seriously by the police. Ten years ago, some men attempted to throw him out of his office window in the ninth floor of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) offices in Harare. On 11
March 2007, he was almost killed by police officers and hired assassins who brutally attacked him.” The MDC was unequivocal in its call for police action against the Zanu (PF) youths.
“This is a litmus test for the police and the security forces as the nation awaits to see the arrest of the hired street urchins who threatened to take action against the Prime Minister – the undisputed winner of the 29 March 2008 elections,” the statement said. “These youths were publicly incited by Politburo members Rugare Gumbo and Absolom Sikhosana; clear evidence that Zanu (PF)s supreme decision making body is an accomplice in this criminal act. All those persons implicated in this dastardly act must immediately be brought to book.”
The Politburo and has spearheaded the campaign – collecting two million signatures to mount a class action against the measures. The party has even attempted to smuggle into the constitution a clause calling for the death penalty on anyone found calling for the imposition of sanctions. “The MDC wants these youths and their sponsors arrested and charged,” the party said. “We call upon SADC and the African Union, the guarantors of the GPA, to intervene and resolve this blatant criminal act which may well be the beginning of deliberate efforts to scuttle and kill a regional initiative which had brought hope to the people of Zimbabwe.”
The Zanu (PF) spokesman Gumbo denied his party had planned taking out a contract on Tsvangirai’s life as alleged and said the MDC was trying to set the agenda for the tripartite regional summit on Zimbabwe in Pretoria this week. Even though he had access to the petition in question, he assumed it was just an outline of a general plan for responses to sanctions, he
said.