16-06-2021
The MDC Alliance Youth Assembly today joins the rest of African countries in commemorating the Day of African Child otherwise known as June 16 Day.
The Day of African Child is marked on the African calendar as a way of cherishing the gallant efforts of South African children who were gruesomely butchered by the Apartheid regime in 1976 for demanding the right not to be taught in Afrikaans language.
That uprising better known as the Soweto Uprising gave birth to this special June 16 Day which is commemorated every year on our African calendar.
It is painful and shameful that 45 years after the murderous 1976 events in Soweto, here in Africa we still have blood thirsty regimes that abduct, torture and murder the African child, all for absolute power.
Here in Zimbabwe, we have one of the most cruel dictatorship that is worse than the racist Apartheid regime of South Africa.
We have a brutal regime that fires live bullets on its citizens as we have witnessed on 01 August 2018.
From arbitrary arrests, pre-trial detentions, abductions, rape torture to murder, the ills of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime are just too much.
While the Apartheid regime would oppress Africans, at least there was some form of infrastructural development and their economy was stable.
The tragedy with Mnangagwa’s apartheid regime is that besides cartels that are looting the national cake, there is virtually no any development to talk about under his so-called, New Dispensation.
The worst part is that citizens who are scrounging for survival through vending following the destruction of the formal economy by this regime are also having their sources of livelihoods destroyed too.
Mnangagwa’s regime has ganged up to destroy the only remaining source of livelihoods for citizens- vending. As we speak right now they are busy destroying vending sites in Chitungwiza and Harare and those who dare to question their inhumane acts like CHITREST Director, Alice Kuvheya are arrested.
The African Child just can not breath under Mnangagwa’s regime!
Children are dying like flies in empty hospitals because there is no medical supplies and doctors are incapacitated to go to work.
We have a regime that is breeding a social problem in the near future because children of the poor can not access basic education. Our education has been commodified by the dictator and is now beyond reach of many.
More so, teachers are incapacitated to report for work and the regime has done nothing to ameliorate their circumstances except buying themselves expensive helicopter.
It is time for the African child in Zimbabwe to draw inspiration from the Soweto children who chose to dare the Apartheid dictatorship.
FreeMako
DefyOrDie
CitizensConvergenceForChange
Stephen Sarkozy Chuma
MDC Alliance Youth Assembly National Spokesperson
