Bulawayo celebrates MDC's seventh anniversary

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BY NELSON CHAMISA

BULAWAYO - An enthusiastic crowd of about 15 000 supporters, clad in colourful party regalia, turned up to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the MDC at the White City stadium arena in Pelandaba, on Sunday.
The jubilant crowd braved the scorching October heat and joined others who had begun to gather at the venue as early as 7am. Forget about the people's passion for the game of football, especially when Highlanders is playing. Yesterday, they were united in their passion for their party, the MDC.
There were speeches by representatives of the churches, the workers, the Zimbabwe National Students Union, the MDC national youth chairman Thamsanqa Mahlangu, women's assembly chairperson Lucia Matibenga, vice national chairman Lovemore Moyo, vice president Thokozani Khupe and the keynote address by party president Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mahlangu urged the youth to realise that the future belonged to them, Matibenga took a swipe at desk-top activists and cyber-revolutionaries who were quick to criticise those who are in the trenches while they themselves were doing nothing and remained tucked thousands of miles away from tyranny. She said Robert Mugabe remained the personification of the national crisis. Khupe thanked the people for retaining their faith and trust in the MDC as their only source of hope in a brutalised nation where hope itself stood the risk of becoming another scarce commodity.
In his keynote address, Tsvangirai said the existence of the MDC was in itself a testament of courage and determination to solve the national crisis, considering the regime's perennial ambition to extinguish the party from the country's political terrain.
Dislodging tyranny had become an urgent assignment for all democratic forces and a duty for every Zimbabwean in and outside the country, he said.
Mugabe's government did not deserve another day, another week or another year in office simply because it was illegitimate and had caused untold suffering to the people of Zimbabwe. The regime, he said, had managed to regenerate itself through a fraudulent electoral process in which Mugabe was both an umpire and wicketkeeper in the same game.
He said the MDC’s major achievement was to unite people, regardless of their tribe, in the realisation that we are all Zimbabweans who share a common vision of collective unity to save our country.
“No-one has chosen to be born Shona, Ndebele or Tonga. The MDC cherishes the people's diversity and envisions a nation where every Zimbabwean, regardless of their tribe, race, religion or creed, has every right to demand a new Zimbabwe and a new beginning,” he said. - Nelson Chamisa is the MDC Secretary for Information and Publicity