JAG challenges MDC over arrests and farm invasions

By Alex Bell
05 May 2009

Justice for Agriculture (JAG) has lashed out at the MDC, for the party’s ‘complicity’ in the ongoing farm invasions and the re-arrest of 18 political activists on Tuesday.

Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, Jestina Mukoko and 17 other activists, who all spent months behind bars facing trumped-up terrorism charges, were hauled back into custody Tuesday. At the same time, countrywide farm invasions, led by ZANU PF loyalists, have continued unabated since the formation of the unity government, forcing most commercial farmers into hiding. More that 100 farmers are facing charges of being on their own land ‘illegally’, while an estimated 700 farm workers and their families have been displaced by the recent attacks.

These are all clear violations of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that formed the basis for the unity government, which Zimbabweans had hoped would usher in real change in the crisis weary country. But the violations have seen a muted response from the MDC members in the unity government, and concern is beginning to surface that the party is just passively allowing events to unfold.

JAG’s John Worsley-Worswick explained on Tuesday that the MDC was in a prime position to challenge the Robert Mugabe regime when they formed the coalition government, because the GPA included the release of all political prisoners and encouraged production on farms.

“The battle fields were clearly defined by the agreement, and people were heartened when the political prisoners were all released,” Worsley-Worswick said. “But the MDC has instead been tepid in responding to the violations since then and people are losing faith.”

Worsley-Worswick argued that the MDC’s passive response to the farm attacks, which started in earnest the same week that Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister, set the scene for the re-arrest of Mukoko and the 17 others. Worsley-Worswick continued that it is obvious that the Mugabe regime “has every intention of scuttling the agreement,” but argued that the MDC will be party to the collapse of the agreement because of the it’s passive response to the events that are putting the entire future of the country at risk.