By Elliott Pfebve

Today a dark cloud hangs perilously above the Pfebve family, 20 years ago today, on the 30 April 2000.

Government sponsored youth & militia pounced the village of Nyakatondo in MT Darwin, a murder gang operating with impunity of more than 600, abducted, maimed, raped and murdered my brother Mathew.

This was coordinated at highest level of government, with DDF logistics, government vehicles and CIO trucks. Torture camps were set 3 weeks before the invasion, one at Kamutsenzere.

This follows an earlier attempted assassination at Rushinga turn-off on 15 April 2000 by a mafia gang led by Saviour Kasukuwere, numbering over 700.

A series of attempted assassinations by Border Gezi in Bindura and an attempted assassination in Chiweshe by Chenhamo Chumutengwende.

The assassinations, murders, rape, arson attacks and violence were coordinated and continue to be coordinated at national and regional government level.

Zimbabweans need to be united and disrupt the growth of toxic politics, autocracy and intolerance by the current regime.

As an MDC party, we have a duty of candour to rescue the people of Zimbabwe at the messy of the ruthless government.

It is not business as usual,

1. If the government institutions are captured
2. If the government meant to save the people is in a state of paralysis
3. If the judiciary, the executive and legislature is captured
4. If mass abductions, murders, rape continue with impunity
5. If the elections continue to be symbolic, devoid of free and fair
6. If food, jobs & services continue to be politicised.
7. If the civic society, workers, citizens’ rights continue to be violated and gauged.

Solution:

1. MDC needs to rebrand, redeploy, and engage in disruptive innovative leadership that cut across all spectrum and structures. A new approach to politics and leadership before is too late.
2. The Supreme Court ruling is a sideshow meant to divert MDC attention from the struggle using our vulnerable sell out comrades whose appetite for dirty money has given them out as sell outs.
3. MDC must not read much into the Finance Act money disbursement fiasco; let the ED government pay their puppets. When MDC was formed, its membership and well-wishers funded it, we can do it again! Money follows good politics.
4. There is no point complying with oppressive laws enacted by an illegitimate regime, which grabbed power through rigging.
5. Grateful to have lawyers in MDC leadership but that may be counterproductive if we spent so much time arguing before captured courts, colluding with the enemies of the people.