The Bhanyamlenge gang (2000-2010)
This gang was formed during the Tsvangirai era, may his soul rest in peace and has always been violent and known for standoffs with the police. As if that was enough, the looting and destructive demos which took place during the first decade of the 20th century were amplified by the so-called Bhanyamulenge gang. The gang comprised of mainly members of the MDC youth league. During those years, the regime change agenda was at its peak and the MDC’s violent machinery was well oiled by the Bush and Blair administrations, nothing new here. The MDC prided itself for having begged for sanctions, which became the major source of civil strife in Zimbabwe till today and that was the main reason Tsvangirai was always on the collision course with the then administration.
The MDC project is an open book, known by everyone in the continent that it was a surrogate of the colonial powers and a pet project for the Americans. It was a well-oiled machine such that when they plan for a demo, the business community would close shop. The demos were characterised by looting, burning of buildings and attacking law enforcement agents in the process. The Banyamulenge gang attacked Mangoma and ravaged him leaving him for dead only to create a vantage point for their candidate Chamisa.
The Vanguard gang
As the youth were rising up the ranks, they got trigger happy and kept on fertilising their violent youth league. Over the years, the youth league was fighting to occupy the seats in the presidium, hence the shoving-off of the likes of Gibson Sibanda. During the MDC splits, it was all the works of its militarised youth league which was the kingmaker. The MDC youth league determines who hold the mic, when and what is said. The colonial powers didn’t lose touch of the political dynamics within MDC and they rather began to finance the youth league separately from the main structures thereby propelling a member of the Vanguard to the presidium, goal achieved.
Chamisa has always been their guy and when he lost to Mwonzora for secretary general post, the Vanguard went to Tsvangirai and threatened to stop protecting him unless Chamisa is given an influential post in the party. When Tsvangirai was about to appoint three VPs, the Vanguard backed by the American Embassy proxies approached Tsvangirai and threw Chamisa’s name in the hat and made some serious threats if their demands were not met, that’s how Mwonzora was not appointed one of the MDC VPs.
The Vanguard is considered the king maker within the MDC circles as witnessed by the events on the Tsvangirai funeral. They threatened to burn houses and paid Tsvangirai’s children to side with the Vanguard choice in the Tsvangirai succession battles. They went as far as to burn houses of innocent people just to scare away rivals like Mwonzora, Mudzuri, Khupe, Gutu and others.
The Vanguard + Jim Kunaka + Korokozas = Mashurugwi
The Vanguard in consolidating power, they began to coalesce with other unstructured violently capable groups like the Jim Kunaka crew. Jim facilitated for the recruitment of touts and street kids into the Vanguard gang, henceforth the MDC’s zvigunduru narrative. Jim promoted the zvigunduru mantra through musicians like Winky D and the zvigunduru brand was associated with drug abusive youths, touts and street kids who are defiant to the rule of law. That narrative gave the youths a justification for drug abuse and made it a way of life. The MDC went into election with those people and they were ferried from one rally to the other in numbers causing pandemonium wherever they go. Chamisa forgot to realise that much of his bussed crowd don’t have IDs let alone registered to vote.
Elections were conducted and the MDC lost, which shattered the hopes of their patrons, the Americans, which made them furious and offloaded the blame on weak MDC strategy. The MDC Vanguard having noticed its losing favour and funds from the masters at the US Embassy, they decided to take another approach which is even more heinous and evil. Out of advisement from the Jim Kunaka faction, the MDC Vanguard infiltrated the peaceful Makorokozas. Having invaded all the gold rich areas, they started slaughtering other Korokozas and came up with a new breed of violent youths which is basically a combination of ‘Zvigunduru’ and the Vanguard. These youths are called Mashurugwi whose aim is to cause harm and confusion in gold rich areas and inciting the homeless kids to join the violence and robbing spree.
MDC is the major benefactor in the Mashurugwi debacle, but the bigger question is; what is the motive and who collects the money from all those robberies? Given the history of MDC, if these people were not theirs, they would have been up in arms demonstrating over the issue, but rather they are mum about it. They clearly know the evil they have created it’s like unleashing a pack of wolves into a goat house.
