Harare - Lone demonstrator and Remnant Church leader Patrick Mugadza has again staged his protest against President Robert Mugabe’s government on Tuesday, by chaining himself to security rails close to the Parliament of Zimbabwe in Harare.
Mugadza - also known as the “Mugabe-must-go-pastor” - on Tuesday chained himself to security rails at Africa Unity Square opposite the Parliament of Zimbabwe.
As he was tying himself to the security railings, police officers manning the Parliament building arrested him and reportedly took him to the Harare Central Police Station Criminal Investigations’ Law and Order Department.
But a police source said Mugadza was actually taken to the Police Internal Security Investigations Department, where he was “being interrogated”. The source said the cleric would not be charged.
David Hofisi and Docas Chitiyo, from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, were dispatched to secure his freedom.
On Tuesday morning, Mugadza said he would stage a protest against corruption at the Parliament building.
In a paper titled “The Banana Republic”, which was going to be part of his presentation during his “sermon”, Mugadza said he knew “of a people and a nation which has been ruled by one leader”.
“That man is a dictator and a destroyer. He is a deceiver and a drag.”
Mugadza described that leader as “directionless, despicable, downright dump, a dragon, a derelict and a diehard deformer” - believed to be a thinly veiled attack on Mugabe, who has been Zimbabwe’s leader for 36 years since 1980 when the country gained independence from colonial rule.
Mugadza further described that same leader as “a disappointer, a detractor, a despoiler, dross and a derailer”, adding the latter was a devil incarnate.
“He has made himself a God with a small ‘g’. Many have been killed, wounded, disappeared in his name. His associates steal and brag about it in his name,” said the cleric.
In April, Mugadza chained himself to a pole while holding a cross in one hand and a Bible in the other before preaching to passers-by for more than an hour about “what we are supposed to do to free ourselves from the ills which are taking place in our nation”.
In December last year, Mugadza staged a one-man protest against Mugabe during Zanu-PF’s annual conference, which was held in the resort town of Victoria Falls.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY