By Paul Nyathi|Heavy intra party fighting caused the abandonment of MDC-T local government primary elections in Ward 28 of Bulawayo’s Cowdray Park high density suburb on Sunday.

Reports made available to ZimEye.com indicate that incumbent councillor for the ward Collet Ndlovu and some members of his family were on Monday picked up and detained by police details from the Law and Order section at Bulawayo Central Police station on public violence charges following the skirmishes.

Ndlovu and his sons are accused of damaging a vehicle belonging to rival candidate Happison Ncube and injuring several other people suspected to be rival supporters.

Ncube told journalists in a press interview on Monday that his vehicle was badly damaged by Ndlovu and his supporters in the course of the primary election voting when they realised that the incumbent councillor was on the verge of losing the election.

“They attacked my car with stones and bottles and a host of other missiles forcing the presiding officers to call off the elections for security reasons,” said Ncube.

Ncube condemned the violence refusing to comment further on the incident indicating that the party does not allow candidates to comment in the media on the ejections referring journalists to the party spokesperson Thabitha Khumalo who could not immediately be contacted.

65 year old Eunice Mpofu a member of the party who witnessed the incident told ZimEye.com that she has never experienced the kind of violence she saw on Sunday and called on party officials to bring order into the party.

“They wanted to set the vehicle on fire shouting that Happy Ncube must be killed and burnt inside the car,” she said.

“The driver acted very quickly and drove away before a group of young people with petrol bombs could set the vehicle on fire and killed five innocent people,” she said.

Talking to journalists on the incident the Bulawayo provincial Chairperson of the party Gift Banda said that the provincial executive is also not allowed to comment on matters to do with the primary elections referring the journalists to party chairman Morgan Komichi who could not immediately be contacted by ZimEye.com on the violence skirmishes.