Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa claimed in the Herald on Monday that the government had evidence that the Movement for Democratic Change was training bandits in neighbouring Botswana.

Biti said ZANU PF had prepared a colourful document in which the "evidence" forcibly extracted from the party activists was to justify the declaration of a state of emergency.

"We have no doubt as a party that they are going to declare a state of emergency. We are aware that they have produced a 27 page document which is full of rubbish that contains the purported evidence. We are aware that they have three DVDs of purported confessions by MDC activists. The document is as mendacious as fictitious. They would not have gone that far to prepare expensive DVDs, power point presentations and materials that are annexured to that document if they did not want to use it. They are using this as an entry point to declare a state of emergency.”

In a state of emergency, the Bill of rights gets suspended meaning that the Constitution gets suspended. People will be arrested, there is no recourse to lawyers, there is no recourse to courts and people will die in prison, according to Biti.

He said that ZANU PF has always been using the same tactic to silence the opposition. "This is not the first time that ZANU PF has made allegations that MDC is training insurgents and bandits in Botswana. As a matter of fact, the MDC is doing no such thing, Botswana is doing no such thing. In fact, in the SADC meeting in Sandton the Vice President of Botswana challenged Robert Mugabe who backtracked on the allegations.

He added: “The MDC is the defacto government and the fact that we are not controlling government does not detract from the fact that we won the elections in March. We control parliament with the Speaker and leader of parliament coming from the MDC. So how does the MDC which is in government seek to burn down that same government. Parties that participate in banditry are parties that do not believe in democracy. We have refused to go to the hills slinging little guns on our shoulders.”

Biti chronicled stage managed assassination plots which were used in the arrests of opposition leaders after independence. "If they want to declare state of emergency let them do it without creating fiction against the MDC to justify that. The whole thing is a dog's breakfast but one which my dogs won’t touch,” he said.