By MacDonald Dzirutwe

Harare – Zimbabwean police raided the house of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday, looking for weapons they say were used to fake an assassination attempt on him. Movement for Democratic Change supporters have accused President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party of trying to assassinate Tsvangirai during an attack on an MDC rally in Mvurwi, northeast of Harare in early July. Zanu PF denied the charge and alleged that Tsvangirai himself staged the incident to discredit the government. “It is the usual harassment by the authorities. It is a relentless persecution which is totally unfounded. They want to break our spirits but they will not succeed,” Tsvangirai told Reuters as police scoured his family home. Police were welcome to come back and search his house anytime they wanted to, he added. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said officers searched Tsvangirai’s home for teargas canisters and other weapons used during the Mvurwi incident. “We would want to know the origins of the canisters and also the weapons because we would like to minimise all cases of political violence ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections,” he said. Tsvangirai has said the Mvurwi incident could be the beginning of a bloody campaign by Mugabe to win next year’s polls.

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and his party, Zanu PF, is locked in an often violent power struggle with the MDC, which was launched five years ago. The MDC draws most of its support from cities, where people blame Mugabe for Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis since independence. The party has a third of the seats in the 150-member parliament. Mugabe, 80, denies that he has mismanaged the economy and instead accuses opponents of sabotage to punish him for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution among landless blacks. Tsvangirai’s house and offices have been searched several times in recent years for weapons and documents that could implicate him in criminal activities. Tsvangirai is awaiting judgement on one charge of treason for allegedly trying to have Mugabe killed. He is waiting for the start of a separate treason trial based on charges he tried to overthrow Mugabe’s government through street protests last June.

Source: ZWNEWS.COM