'Crisis exists in Zimbabwe's opposition parties'

ZANU-PF director for Information and Publicity Tafadzwa Mugwadi yesterday said the only noticeable crisis in the country was the one in opposition political parties that were haggling over leadership and were suffering from serious policy bankruptcy.

Speaking on a live SABC programme, African Perspective, Mugwadi said the challenges being faced in the country did not amount to a crisis. He said besides being hamstrung by economic sanctions imposed by the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) for over a decade, Zimbabwe had managed to institute measures to mitigate the devastating effects of Covid-19.

The high number of recoveries indicated the effectiveness of measures being implemented by Government. Mugwadi said opposition parties were resorting to blackmail by manufacturing spurious allegations of human rights abuses.

"There is no crisis in Zimbabwe. What we have seen as a crisis is that which is happening in opposition groups, some of which have become leaderless. We do have a crisis as a nation, we have challenges with Covid-19 just like any society across the world and we are on course to addressing that," said Mugwadi.

Responding to allegations of abductions raised by MDC Alliance secretary for international affairs, Gladys Hlatshwayo, Mugwadi said any such cases must be reported to the police.

He gave the example of a Hurungwe MDC-A councillor, Lavender Chiwaya, whom the opposition claimed was killed by State agents saying the allegations have since been proven false. Mugwadi said police had issued a statement ruling out foul play in the death of Chiwaya.