By Paul Nyathi|The Nelson Chamisa led MDC-T has called on its supporters to refrain from the continuous attacks on dismissed former Deputy President Thokozani Khuphe.
The call by Party Deputy Treasurer General Chalton Hwende came up after some MDC-T supporters attending a supreme court hearing on Tuesday spent the day singing very derogatory remarks against the former MDC-T leader who now leads a splinter faction of the party.
Hwende called on the party supporters to instead direct their efforts towards fighting against the ZANU PF regime instead of engaging against fellow opposition leaders especially those who previously led the MDC-T.
Full statement by Hwende reads as follows:
The MDC-T party that I am a proud member of was built on the values of tolerance, especially political tolerance. Our slogan “Chinja Maitiro/Guqula Izenzo” is an enduring statement of the MDC-T’s absolute desire to break down Zanu PF’s politics of fear and hate that has set brother against brother and sister against sister.
We saw this intolerance during Gukurahundi. The brutal killing of Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika continued this cycle. It should have stopped. But 400 of our supporters were killed in 2008 for the crime of being members of the MDC-T.
Preceding these events, almost always, were leaders using language that dehumanises the victims. Ndebeles, murdered in their thousands, were “cockroaches” as Emmerson Mnangagwa once said; and MDC-T supporters were “sellouts”.
At the Supreme Court this afternoon, a small group of MDC-T supporters acting on their own initiative came to show solidarity in an on-going legal dispute with our former colleague, Thokozani Khupe.
I have noted, with profound sadness, videos from outside court which show individuals dressed in MDC-T colours singing sickening songs denouncing Ms Khupe.
While it is true that the MDC-T draws its support from the same human pool as Zanu PF, most MDC-T supporters will find the intolerance exhibited outside court today contrary and alien to the party’s guiding beliefs. We must disagree, peacefully and on principle, because our party has greater ideas, not by debasing our opponents using the language of intolerance.
Thokozani Khupe has chosen to leave the MDC-T tent. We don’t understand or appreciate her reasons, but we must respect her democratic right to choose her associations. Khupe is not the problem, Zanu PF is. We must remain focused on the prize: Mobilising ourselves to fulfil a generational call to get rid of a Zanu PF government that has killed, destroyed and broken everything we value and that which makes us a people with dignity.