Own Correspondent|Opposition MDC has expressed anger at President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s statements that Zimbabweans must eat vegetables instead of the expensively priced meat.

MDC Deputy Spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka, said Mnangagwa had no moral high ground to tell the people what to eat.

“When you have a leader who starts to impose vegetables, a leader and a president who gets into other people’s kitchens determining family diets, it shows you just how much we have sunk as a country,” he said.

Party Vice President Tendai Biti linked the President’s statement to France’s Marie Antoinette, who, during the French Revolution’s bread riots in the late 1700s, said citizens should instead eat cake.

“At the height of the French Revolution, France’s Marie Antoinette, in response to bread protests by citizens retorted ‘let them eat cake’. In Kuwadzana yesterday (Friday), Zimbabwe’s illegitimate leader in response to cries of high cost of meat retorted, ‘let them eat vegetables,” said Biti.

Kuwadzana MP and MDC secretary general, Chalton Hwende said Mnangagwa’s utterances were an insult to the suffering population.

“What an insult from the Junta installed President telling our people in Kuwadzana to eat vegetables when they complained of soaring meat prices. I am not surprised because he was not voted but grabbed the Presidency. In Kuwadzana, his rigging only gave him 2 000 votes,” said Hwende.

The opposition party’s Secretary for Education, Fadzayi Mahere said people should have freedom to choose their diet.

“People must have the freedom to choose their dietary regime for themselves. People must choose to eat vegetables not to be forced to eat them out of poverty. Command nutrition because the government has driven the masses to poverty is hardly anything to celebrate,” she said.