Same old Bob

HEAVILY armed security officers on Friday raided an MDC-T house in
Harare searching for alleged arms of war amid fears of a fresh crackdown on
the party's top leadership following the fallout with Zanu PF.

The raid came hard on the heels of reports that guns and ammunition
disappeared from Pomona Barracks in Borrowdale in unclear circumstances.

It also coincided with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's return from
a whirlwind tour of South Africa, Mozambique, the DRC and Angola where he
lobbied for the region to pressure President Robert Mugabe to fully
implement their power-sharing agreement.

MDC-T secretary-general Tendai Biti yesterday said 50 security agents
rummaged through the house in Chisipite, assaulted occupants and forced a
caretaker to dig in the garden in search of the alleged weapons.

The police did not have a signed search warrant, he said.

Biti, who is the Minister of Finance, said the raid came after his
party had just received intelligence that the police were planning to raid
other MDC-T houses in Harare.

"We consider this a serious invasion of our privacy, of our party and
leadership," Biti said. "It's a gross provocation of our movement."

"We have no doubt that from now on there will be attempts to frame the
MDC-T and its leadership as a treasonous party."

The MDC-T feared that the police could have planted arms of war in the
garden after they took the caretaker, Moffat Sigauke, into the house while
many officers remained outside.

"When they took Moffat into the house, the majority of them remained
in the garden and we fear that they might have planted arms there," he said.

Biti said President Mugabe has a history of framing his political
rivals with treason charges in a bid to cling to power.

He said Mugabe used the same tricks to frame the late Vice-President
Joshua Nkomo before Gukurahundi and the late Zanu (Ndonga) leader Rev
Ndabaningi Sithole of treason in an effort to hound them out of politics.