The Zimbabwe Peace Projects (ZPP) has condemned the violence that occurred at the MDC T’s chaotic congress on Sunday and urged the party to not emulate the government’s violent tendencies.
Using the microblogging site Twitter ZPP said:
The Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) condemns in the strongest terms, the violence that occurred at the MDC-T Extra-Ordinary Congress in Harare on 27 December 2020.
In some of the scenes of violence, some of the congress delegates can be seen physically and verbally assaulting one of the MDC-T presidential contestants @DrThoko_Khupe & her supporters in what is a deliberate and open attack on women’s participation in politics as a whole.
ZPP is concerned about the growing pattern where women are physically and verbally assaulted, and called all sorts of derogatory names for being participants and activists in politics and if not nipped, this threatens women’s participation in all leadership positions.
ZPP believes peaceful political contestation – as espoused in our Constitution – is the only progressive way to ensuring everyone, regardless of sex, ethnicity, tribe, and age, get their fair chances to use their Constitutionally guaranteed rights to participate in politics.
We also believe that as an opposition party, the MDC-T’s role is to hold to account the ruling party and government, and they should therefore not mirror the same violent tendencies.
While we cannot dictate how political parties – as voluntary organisations – conduct their business, we strongly condemn the use of violence, as this only serves to perpetuate a culture of intolerance. Intolerance has no place in a country that is supposed to be a democracy.
At the congress in question, Thokozani Khupe was escorted out of the election center, and a video of someone smacking her as she exits the auditorium circulated.
