Today, 10 September 2011 the MDC party of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is celebrating the 12 th Anniversary of the party at Gwanzura Stadium in Harare. Many people are fearful that there might be the usual Zanu PF inspired political violence. MDC has sort to assure the public that there will be no violence.

The MDC spokesman, Douglas Monzora, said the party are taken steps to protect the public. The party has retained its own security!

All those who had hoped that the formation of the GNU in Zimbabwe would bring an end to political violence and lawlessness were in for a big disappointment. The political violence and lawlessness have continued and now with talks of fresh elections next year, the violence has grown decidedly worse.

All our lives the people of Zimbabwe have lived in fear. Fear of being harassed, beaten, raped or worse still murdered. Mugabe used arms to force the white racist minority government of Ian Smith to accept black majority. But more significantly he used the same military muscle to impose his political will on the nation. When the blacks cast their very first votes in 1980, they were under no illusions that the victorious Zanu PF and PF Zapu would accept defeat.

“The vote must follow the bullet!” Mugabe told the nation at the time and has repeated the same message again and again for the last thirty years each time he felt his hold on political power threatened.

The 1980 elections was a vote to stop the war just as the June 2008 vote was to stop the beatings, rapes and murders. Some people would argue that both Mugabe and Nkomo would have accepted the 1980 election results even if they had lost. One has only to look at the brutality the two leaders have inspired since to retain power to know that can not be true.

Mugabe’s control of the Army, Police, CIO and all the other State Security Agencies has been total. Whilst these organs have done well in keeping law and order when Zanu PF’s hold on power was threatened they have all shown that their loyalty is to Mugabe and the party and not the nation.

Mugabe has used the members of the Zanu PF’s Youth and Women League and War Veterans has its foot soldiers to harass and intimidate the people and keep them faithful to the party. The Police have never, as a rule, arrested any these thugs. On the odd occasion that these thugs are arrested, those who shot and nearly killed the opposition parliamentary candidate Patrick Kombayi in 1990 for example, Mugabe himself stepped in and pardoned them. This has underlined the political reality that Zanu PF thugs are above the law.

Whilst the Zanu PF foot soldiers were deployed to provide the never ending political harassment, beatings, rapes and murders Mugabe has deployed the Police, Army, etc. at the drop of a hat whenever he felt the need to escalate the political violence. This is the reality on the ground in Zimbabwe today.

“The situation in Highfields (the suburb were Gwanzura Stadium is) is now back to normal and there is calm,” Monzora assured the public.
Calm? Does MDC really think whatever security the party has engage can stop the violence? Even if the party’s security can stop violence occurring in the Stadium itself it can not stop the violence outside. The party faithful have to get into the Stadium and Zanu PF thugs will ambush them and stop them getting in. The Police will standby and do nothing, as usual.

If there is no violence at Gwanzura Stadium, it will be because Mugabe and JOC directed that there would be no violence and not because of whatever security measures MDC claim to have taken.

Prime Minister Tsvangirai will reportedly give the key-note address to the gathering praising MDC’s achievements in bring about democratic changes in Zimbabwe. Threat of politically motivated violence still hangs over the nation, more ominous now than ever, and yet Tsvangirai claim there has been democratic change!

The only change that has taken place since MDC signed the power sharing arrangement that allowed Mugabe back into State House through the back door with all his dictatorial powers is that Tsvangirai and some of his fellow MDC leaders have been appointed into senior government positions. And they have since forgotten the plight of the ordinary Zimbabweans who still live in fear. “They mouths are too full to speak out for the masses,” as Joseph Whande has often said.

The people of Zimbabwe would have forgiven MDC for betraying the nation by signing the GPA if the party had delivered one thing – an end to the culture of political violence. That should have been the party’s last and none negotiable bottom line.

Tsvangirai will never deliver democratic change just as Mugabe failed to deliver freedom and liberty because he has never fully comprehended the complexities of subject. It takes some intellect to comprehend a subject and then to articulate and set goals. MDC has never had any set goals to achieve and so naturally the party does not view the last 12 years as a failure regardless of all the failures and blunders. The very fact that he is Prime Minister is itself cause for celebration for Tsvangirai and MDC; he will never accept that it is a glorified position with neither power nor authority!
MDC is in fact celebrating 12 years of failures and blunders; it beggars belief!