Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and about 10 officials of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party were early on Thursday morning deported from Zambia where they had gone to attend meetings, MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said.
Chamisa said the Zimbabwean opposition politicians had been in Zambia for two days conducting ”party business”, whose nature he would not disclose, when a combined force of about 50 intelligence, police and army officers rounded them up from their hotel rooms in Lusaka at about 1am and told them to leave the country because they were a ”security threat”.
The Zambian security forces who, according to Chamisa, were ”armed to the teeth”, bundled the MDC politicians into cars and drove them to the border in a convoy of about eight vehicles.
Tsvangirai and his group were dropped off on the Zambian side and had to walk from there to Victoria Falls town just across on the Zimbabwean side.
”We were deported from Zambia after we had already spent two days in that country. We were told that we were a security threat,” said Chamisa.
He said the Zambian security agents did not explain what sort of security threat Tsvangirai and his group posed.
Chamisa said the MDC was in the process of trying to establish from the Zambian government why its leader and his delegation were deported, adding that the opposition party would still want to return to Lusaka to complete their business.
It was not possible to get comment from the Zambian foreign affairs ministry in Lusaka or from the country’s embassy in Harare.
Tsvangirai, one of Africa’ leading opposition political leaders, has in the past visited several southern African countries imploring them to help pressure President Robert Mugabe to uphold democracy. He had never before visited Zambia.
In keeping with the tradition of politics in Africa, no government in the region or on the continent has ever publicly expressed support for Tsvangirai in his efforts to push Mugabe out of power, but they have generally treated him with a modicum of respect, an obvious acknowledgement that he could assume power one day.
A former trade unionist, ironically like most of Zambia’s ruling politicians today, Tsvangirai founded the MDC in 1999, building it over six years to become the biggest threat to Mugabe’s stranglehold on power.
But the MDC’s political fortunes have taken a dip after splitting into two rival camps following disagreements between Tsvangirai and other top leaders over whether to contest a controversial Senate election last November. — ZimOnline