The MDC secretary for elections, Jacob Mafume, has defended the party’s decision to embrace people implicated in the murder of the party’s activists in previous elections.
Responding to social activist Freeman Chari, now based in the United States of America, who had suggested that the party was betraying those who were killed, Mafume said:
Chief, you live in a country where Africans used to slaves. You went by plane Africans went by ship just less than 150 years ago. In a country where Martin Luther King had to fight for the vote for Africans. Where is this judgemental process coming from?
Posting on Twitter, Chari has expressed dismay over the MDC’s acceptance of people who are “known” to have killed Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika. He wrote:
Our house was less than 500m from where Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika were killed. The people who killed them are known.
I still find it difficult to walk hand in hand with those who killed them and say we are in the same struggle… Ini hangu zvongondinetsa. Ndiniwo!
You can all forget and enjoy the expedience but for me, I remember many times people telling me kuti “Uchafira mahara!” I refused to believe that even if I was to die it would be in vain. I think of these people’s kids and relatives.