HARARE – President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s adviser turned critic Shingi Munyeza was hounded out of an event in Harare on Tuesday by the Zimbabwe leader’s supporters.
Munyeza was due to speak at the launch of the Zimbabwe Institute of Strategic Thinkers alongside businessman Nigel Chanakira, when over a dozen Zanu PF youths started rushing him.
The preacher, who sits on the Presidential Advisory Council, was forced to leave the meeting with the hostile Zanu PF youths pursuing him, according to a video shared online.
“They chased me down a flight of stairs. I’m being targeted for stating that the government has gone rogue and is waging war against citizens. I won’t be silenced,” Munyeza said about the incident.
“I call it an occult system (Mnangagwa regime), and this was an orchestrated move to try and muzzle me. It is an orchestrated move to try and raise fear and to take away my own freedoms and rights. I will not relent, I am not deterred, I remain resolute. This country is being run by a rogue system.
“What people have now realised is what I have been saying all along. There is no respect for freedoms, there is no respect for rights so today was such a day where I was stopped from addressing a gathering that was apolitical. I am very fully aware of it, I am cognisant of it but it is what it is, we have a rogue system.”
In his latest sermon on Sunday, Munyeza said Zimbabwe was in a crisis and accused the Zanu PF regime of having gone “rogue and cancerous”.
“We have a crisis. The system has gone rogue and cancerous. They can’t provide, protect or prosper citizens. They are like cancerous cells which will destroy the body,” he said.
Critics accuse President Mnangagwa of persecuting his opponents amid the worst economic crisis in more than a decade.
Dozens of opposition leaders, supporters, journalists, trade union leaders and nurses have been arrested in recent weeks accused of participating in plots to oust Mnangagwa.
The 77-year-old has labelled his rivals “dark forces” and claims they are working with hostile Western countries to torpedo his government.
