MDC-T Manicaland provincial spokesperson, Pishai Muchauraya said his party was still offering shelter to the victims of political violence. While some are housed at a safe house in Mutare, others are said to be staying with relatives and friends, away from their tormentors.
Muchauraya, who is also MP for Makoni South, feared that the victims might be permanently displaced as most of them lost all their properties when Zanu PF activists set blaze their homesteads and slaughtered their livestock.
“We are still offering them shelter and food because it is not safe for them to go back,” Muchauraya said.
“As we speak, some senior Zanu PF officials in the district defaced our party symbol at our offices and repainted the building in an act that definitely does not bode well with the letter and spirit of the Global Political Agreement (GPA).”
The MDC-T has since secured vacancies in schools around Mutare for children displaced alongside their parents.
However, others have not been that fortunate and their future looks bleak, said Muchauraya.
The MDC-T provincial spokesperson blasted the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (Jomic) for lacking urgency in addressing the plight of victims of political violence.
The Jomic team, which comprises of officials from Zanu PF and the two MDC formations, has not set foot in the violence-ridden district since its last visit in June.
“They have not come back since their last visit in June,” he said. “I want to tell them to wake up or risk being irrelevant.”
MDC-T has since its formation just over a decade ago accused Zanu PF and State security agents of terrorising its supporters countrywide.
It claimed that Zanu PF and State security agents murdered at least 200 of its supporters during the violent 2008 elections.
Muchauraya said his party was running out of patience and would seek “a political solution because we cannot allow our supporters to be displaced permanently”.
Jomic to visit Chimanimani after Sadc summit
Jomic member Frank Chamunorwa of the MDC, said the political displacements were one of the issues that Jomic and the South African facilitation team discussed on Thursday.
He said the Jomic team would visit victims of political violence in Chimanimani District after the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) summit in Angola this week, where the Zimbabwe crisis is expected to feature prominently at the meeting.
“We are going to Chimanimani as the operational committee and co-chairpersons of all the political parties, soon after the Sadc summit,” Chamunorwa said.
“We raised the issue of displacements and continued political violence with the Sadc facilitation team.”
Jomic spokesperson Joram Nyathi said the body would go back to Chimanimani at the end of this month to try and address the political crisis in the district.
He said Jomic could not immediately return there after their second visit because of a busy schedule.
“We have many projects that we have been undertaking, such as meeting editors and civil society,” Nyathi said.
“We will be going back there, possibly on the 27th or 28th of August.”