MDC-T targets Mugabe ouster in 'few weeks'

The Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC has vowed to force President Robert Mugabe to resign through a national "grand" demonstration which it says will be rolled out within a "few" weeks.

The planned national demonstration comes at a time the nonagenarian is feeling the heat from the ordinary Zimbabweans whose anger has swollen in the last three months as a result of the deepening economic rot.

The MDC has been holding peaceful protests in major cities as part of its plan unveiled at its fourth congress in 2014.

In an interview with the Daily News yesterday, MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu said they were upholding their youths' resolution who gave Mugabe an August 31 ultimatum to leave office.

"The MDC youth assembly is the vanguard of our party. The youths are the engine and pistons of the MDC-led revolution in Zimbabwe," Gutu said.

"The Zanu-PF regime is curving in, it is collapsing. We are pretty confident that the Zanu-PF regime will be abdicating from power within the next few weeks. The regime is clueless, ruptured to the very core and totally bankrupt."

As part of galvanising its supporters for what it said would be a mammoth national demonstration, the MDC has been holding protests in major cities since May. So far, it has held well-attended street protests in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare and Masvingo.

This weekend they will be toyi-toying in Gweru.

"These demonstrations will culminate in a massive grandmaster demonstration that will be held in the capital city at a date to be announced. Momentum is gathering and the people of Zimbabwe, including non-MDC supporters, are actually urging us on," said Gutu.

Gutu added that the Gweru mass action would target Zanu-PF's continuing misrule, the party's failure to fulfil its 2013 election promises to create 2, 2 million new jobs, as well as agitate for answers following Mugabe's claim that $15 billion had been stolen from the Chiadzwa diamond mining fields among other things.

"Zimbabwe is for all of us and we are all affected by the insipid corruption that pervades all aspects of the Zanu-PF regime.

"Our children are demanding jobs and particularly for the Midlands city of Gweru, major companies such as Bata Shoe Company and Zimbabwe Alloys are tottering on the verge of collapse," Gutu said.

"Of course, Zimbabweans are looking up to us to lead them to Canaan. We have the necessary political gravitas and intellectual firepower to organise and lead peaceful demonstrations that will ultimately lead to the fall of the Zanu-PF dictatorship."

"The Zanu-PF regime, as we have stated on times without number, is now living on borrowed time. The regime's fascist plan to clamp down on the use of social media will crumble like a deck of cards.

"Social media is here to stay and no amount of regime paranoia can successfully stop the social media revolution.

"We are living in the digital age and the Zanu-PF regime, if it so desires, is free to remain trapped in a primitive and backward outpost of Stalinist myopia," he added.

Mugabe, 92, is facing the biggest challenge to his 36-year unflappable rule which many critics say has destroyed the once-thriving economy.

The Zimbabwean leader is accused of turning the economy he inherited from the Rhodesian regime in 1980 into a basket case through corruption and ruinous policies.

However, Mugabe blames targeted sanctions for destroying the economy although pro-democracy and opposition groups maintain he has authored Zimbabwe's problems as a result of bad governance.