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| Sikhala exonerates Tsvangirai faction over Stevenson attack |
 Member of Parliament, Trudy Stevenson By Our Correspondent HARARE, April 12, 2007- Job Sikhala, a senior official of the breakaway Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) faction led by Prof Arthur Mutambara, stunned parliamentarians on both sides of the House yesterday when he exonerated the mainstream MDC party led by Morgan Tsvangirai on any involvement in the attack last year on opposition politician Trudy Stevenson. He said state security agents – and not members of the rival MDC faction - were responsible for the attack on Member of Parliament, Trudy Stevenson, in July 2006. Sikhala's surprise utterance contradicted statements issued not only by himself, but also by Prof Welshman Ncube and Gabriel Chaibva the faction's secretary general and secretary for publicity respectively, soon after the attack. They all blamed the mainstream MDC led by Tsvangirai for the ruthless assault on Stevenson, the Harare North MP, who is a member of the Mutambara faction Yesterday Sikhala said members of Tsvangirai party were not to blame for the attack. Instead, he openly fingered Zanu-PF MP and minister Saviour Kasukuwere, who was present, for having sent members of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to attack Stevenson so that Tsvangirai would be blamed for the assault. Kasukuwere, who is the Minister of Youth Development and Employment Creation, immediately protested and demanded that the opposition legislator withdraw his statement. Sikhala, the MP for St Mary's, however stood his ground and defiantly refused to withdraw. Instead, so Sikhala said, he wanted to set the record straight after claims by Ncube that the Tsvangirai faction was responsible for the vicious attack. At the time of Stevenson attack, Ncube said: "This brutal attack on a Member of Parliament and our supporters proves that Tsvangirai and his people are a complete mirror image of Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF. "They have established no-go areas for other political parties in Harare and elsewhere. This vindicates our position that it will make no difference to elect Tsvangirai as President because he will prove a worse dictator." The faction also rejected the findings by an independent panel headed by advocate Happious Zhou that also blamed state agents for Stevenson's attack. But yesterday Sikhala said his faction was wrong to blame Tsvangirai's supporters. He made the controversial revelations as he spoke in Parliament during debate on a motion on the recent spate of assaults on political, church, civil society and student leaders. The motion was moved by Mbare MP Gift Chimanikire, of the mainstream MDC, who said that according to the party's own intelligence, state agents had attacked Stevenson. Sikhala was challenging an allegation by former Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) boss and now Zanu PF Makoni East MP Shadreck Chipanga that MDC members had attacked Stevenson. "On a point of order, Mr Speaker, I do not think it is fair for the Member of Parliament for Makoni East to try to bring up the name of an innocent grandmother like Hon Stevenson. According to our intelligence sources, to make the record straight, the people who attacked Hon Stevenson were CIO's who were sent by Hon Kasukuwere and others," said Sikhala. Sikhala protested vehemently when Joram Gumbo, the ruling party's Chief Whip, said there were two MDC factions. Sikhala suggested there were no longer any factions in the MDC. There has been no official announcement of this development. "No, we are now one," Sikhala said, adding that it was only in Zanu-PF that factions existed, saying there were four factions in the party. "Now that there is a confession that they are now one, we are going to give an account of their activities when they are one," Gumbo retorted. All the Zanu-PF MPs who contributed to the debate were unanimous in castigating the MDC as a violent party that was receiving funding from western powers to destabilise the country. MP Leo Mugabe, the Zanu-PF Makonde repeated his uncle, President Mugabe's recent preposterous statement that Tsvangirai deserved to be assaulted by state agents. "To make matters worse, when Chamisa and others were arrested at Machipisa police station, Tsvangirai went there and violently tried to rescue those who were arrested," Leo Mugabe said. "When he went there, he wanted to be arrested like Madhuku always likes to be arrested. If Madhuku spends three months without being arrested he does not feel good." The MP for Masvingo, Tongai Matutu (MDC) said Zanu PF was the violent party. He referred to the attack on James Kaunye for daring to challenge State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa in 2004. "That violence almost put Hon Chinamasa in trouble when he tried to intervene to solve the problem," Matutu said. The Attorney General's office recently dropped charges against Chinamasa for attempting to defeat the course of justice when he allegedly pressured state witnesses to withdraw charges against Mutasa's supporters. |
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