Own Correspondent|MDC Alliance youth leader Discent Bajila has issued a statement apologising over the utterances made by the party President Nelson Chamisa in a press conference on Thursday.
Chamisa received a barrage of social media attacks when he inferred that people who took to the streets on the first of August over delays in announcing election results by ZEC, were stupid.
According to Bajila, who is the Youth Wing National Secretary General, the statement was “a slip of the tongue” by Chamisa.
Bajila claimed that the opposition leader is still undergoing emotional pressure following attempts on his life by state security agents and must be forgiven for the utterances.
Wrote Bajila on his Facebook page:
That was a slip of the tongue. It’s uncalled for and regrettable. We pray for your unconditional forgiveness. We believe there’s no higher sanity than exercise of one’s constitutional rights, including but not limited to section 59 of the Constitution. We ask religious practitioners in various forms and denominations to pray more for our leadership during this hour of trial and tribulation.
We ask Zimbabweans to bear with us and pray for our leader as he undergoes emotional healing from attempts to his life and that of his wife.
To our members, the non violent struggle has not been abandoned. More than any of us, our leader remains committed not only to organising but to actually leading non violent nation wide protests. It is the act of shooting non violent protesters that we consider stupid. The manner in which it came out was a regrettable slip of the tongue.
To civil society and other democratic forces, please bear with us. Our belief in the legality, sanity and necessity of protests remains as inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr as it was in September 1999. We’re not about to abandon that path and neither are we about to condemn those engaging in it outside our ranks. In fact we call upon civil society and other democratic forces to organise more and more non violent protests against injustice, hunger, corruption and the entire kakistocracy of this State.