Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe vowed Saturday ”greater action” would be taken against the main opposition party which he accused of wanting to overthrow his government.
In comments carried by state television, Mugabe slammed the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its stayaway this week vowing that from now on there would be ”greater vigour, greater vigilance and greater action by my government”.
”We shall not treat them with soft gloves anymore,” Mugabe told hundreds of youths from his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
The comments came as the MDC claimed hundreds of its officials and supporters had been abducted in night raids by military agents after a widely followed job stayaway earlier this week closed down urban areas.
The stayaway was organised to protest alleged misgovernance.
Mugabe however claimed the stayaway was ”a flop” and accused the opposition party of violence.
”They can’t tell the world that they succeeded, because their target was to overthrow our government,” he told cheering supporters at his party’s headquarters in Harare.
And he said black MDC supporters were really whites. ”Yes, you wear our skin, but below that skin, you are white.”
Mugabe’s government regularly accuses the MDC of being a front for white interests and former colonial power Britain. Rights groups say there has been increased repression against the opposition and rights activists by state agents in Zimbabwe during and after the stayaway. – Sapa-AFP