MDC supporters who attended the party’s 19th-anniversary celebrations at Gwanzura Stadium on Saturday threatened to go into the streets to demand the immediate resignation of President Emmerson Mnangagwa whom they accused of rigging the July 30 presidential elections.
The supporters, who appeared not to have moved on from their leader’s defeat at the hands of Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF two months ago, are still optimistic Chamisa can maneuver his way to the state house and be the president of the republic.
During the celebrations, the MDC leadership kept on threatening to march to the state house to confront Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF and reclaim their “lost victory”.
“The message has been very clear from day one, we are ready to march to the state house and tell Mnangagwa that he stole the people’s elections and we will not accept his leadership,” said 35-year-old Sandra Mucheke, from Highfield.
“All we are waiting for is a green light from the people’s president to go ahead with the march and we will fill up the streets. We don’t care if the police and soldiers will kill us, we are dead already anyway because we are lacking basic services,” said Gogo Maureen Maseko from Bulawayo.
MDC National Youth Chairperson, Happymore Chidziva warned that the opposition front will not be deterred from marching to the state house.
When Chamisa took to the podium, the visibly excited crowd demanded to march against Mnangagwa’s victory in the July 30 harmonized polls.
The highly jubilant crowd could be heard shouting “izvezvi, izvezvi, izvezvi” (now , now , now) after the youthful opposition leader had asked on their readiness to march to state house.
Chamisa assured his supporters that he would give them a signal as to when to hold the mass action.
“We stand ready to go and reclaim the people’s power. They stole our victory and rigged the election. However, they cannot rig the economy and I will not stop biting this government until they return my presidency,” Chamisa said.
He repeated his earlier claims that the current economic problems bedeviling the country are a result of the unresolved legitimacy question.
“There is no moving forward without looking at who won the election. If we were in power, we would not be having these problems,” lamented Chamisa.
The country has been facing economic hiccups since the Mnangagwa administration came into office in August with optimism turning into despair for the millions of Zimbabweans who had pinned their hopes for economic recovery on the Zanu PF administration.
