President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF, reeling from swelling public anger over its disastrous stewardship of the State over the past 36 years, is training its guns on pressure group Tajamuka/Sesjikile and unbowed clergyman Pastor Evan Mawarire, as it desperately seeks to quell the growing citizen unrest. Love one another. So beware these men of God.
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They further said Zimbabweans had lost confidence in Mugabe’s rule.
After almost three decades as president, Mugabe is clinging to power, and his 50-year-old wife Grace, tipped as a possible successor, last month warned that Mugabe would continue to rule the country from beyond the grave.
Mawarire has used #ThisFlag on social media to call for peaceful protests against the government, and has drawn the wrath of Mugabe, who accused Mawarire of being funded by foreign countries and of not being a “true preacher of the Bible”.
Mawarire was arrested on charges of treason but the case was thrown out last week in a Zimbabwean court.
Mugabe told Mawarire to leave Zimbabwe if he was unhappy with what was happening in the country. I don’t know whether they are serving God.
The announcement “delegitimizes Mugabe in a big way, not least because he is always quick to flaunt his war credentials and revels in his title as patron of the war veterans association”, said political analyst Gabriel Shumba, chairman of the South Africa-based Zimbabwe Exiles Forum.
“What we are advocating for, more than anything else, is a government that respects the dignity of its citizens”, he said, adding that his campaign would never be hijacked by politicians because it belonged to the people.
“The Mawarires and those who believe in that way of living in our country, well, they are not part of us in thinking”.
Pro-democracy protests erupted nation-wide over the past week, according to Zimbabwe’s Daily News, as protestors call for the resignation of Mugabe and his cabinet ministers.
The association says it will no longer support him as presidential candidate in any future elections.
Government officials also accused French and American ambassadors in Harare of supporting the protesters, which they denied.
Many in Zimbabwe are frustrated with Mugabe and a rapidly deteriorating economy, a currency crisis and alleged corruption.
Zimbabwe is in a deep economic abyss that has seen the government fail to pay civil servants on time due to government’s ever diminishing revenues caused by the continued closure of companies and the informalisation of the economy, among other reasons.
“The government intimidates us, they arrest us and they scare us into keeping quiet, and we are saying we are done with that”, he said.
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“We are in a season where fear is being broken”, he said.
