Secessionist Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) has expressed fears that the military, tasked with controlling the movement of people ahead of the impending 21-day mandatory national lockdown, will kill more Zimbabweans than the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.
On Friday evening, President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced that members of the security forces will be deployed across the country in the pursuit of enforcing abidance to the looming three-week national shutdown which begins on Monday next week.
The lockdown is meant to eradicate the spread of the catastrophic coronavirus pandemic which has killed thousands and rendered hundreds of thousands hospitalised globally.
But, the MRP’s concern is that the army will likely kill more people than the ravaging coronavirus pandemic if it is deployed in the streets to control movement of the interdicted masses.
“My worry and fear is that if the Zimbabwean government decided to release the army like what (the South African Government) did to the public, to control people’s movement, we will have more victims from the army than coronavirus”, said Mfanelo Sibanda, MRP’s Bulawayo Province committee member, in a Facebook post.
Describing the Zimbabwean government as ‘useless’, Sibanda said what the Harare administration could only offer to the ‘Mthwakazi people’ were ‘killings, marginalisation, corruption and tribalism’.
Critics have often blamed Mnangagwa, who came to power through a military coup in November 2017, for over-dependance on the country’s security forces to crush dissent.
Zwnews