THE fight for MDC-T presidency has taken a new turn amid
reports of a plot to push out acting party leader Thokozani Khupe from the race
because of her close association with President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Political
Actors Dialogue (Polad).
Khupe’s MDC-T and several other fringe opposition parties
are members of the Mnangagwa-initiated platform to resolve the country’s
political contestations, but MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa has
sarcastically dismissed the platform as a “Zanu PF choir”.
Khupe has since threatened to take over Chamisa’s party on
the strength of a recent Supreme Court ruling that recognised her as acting
party president and ordered the warring factions to revert to the MDC-T
structures of 2014.
But Douglas Mwonzora, who assumed the post of MDC-T
secretary-general following the Supreme Court ruling, has reportedly started
campaigning for the party presidency against two other contenders, Morgen
Komichi and Gift Chimanikire.
Mwonzora is in charge of organising an extra-ordinary
congress (EOC) to choose the MDC-T’s substantive executive.
“The structures are clear that Khupe can’t be our president
because she is too compromised, she is seen as a Zanu PF project and they don’t
even want her to remain acting president for three months, they want the EOC to
be done faster,” a Mwonzora aide said.
“Khupe has never been in the contention for MDC presidency,
she was vice at (founding leader) Morgan (Tsvangirai)’s death, that entitled
her to act pending EOC.
But it ended there. She has to be realistic. The moment is
not hers,” the source said.
Former MDC-T secretary-general Nixon Nyikadzino, who has
appointed himself acting party president, said Khupe stood no ground against
Mwonzora and Komichi.
“She has thrown herself to the wolves. They are using her
to satisfy their own ends. For instance, Komichi can’t claim to be a
constitutionalist now, when he was the one who presided over the elevation of
Chamisa to the position of president. She has fired herself from our party and
she is going to fall by the wayside in Mwonzora’s MDC, it’s a dog eat dog affair,”
Nyikadzino said.
But Komichi insisted he was well grounded to take over the
party leadership.
“In Gwanda, people are phoning me, in Binga they are also
calling me. They are committing themselves to come, they are prepared even to
sell their goats and cattle to come and attend this congress.
They are prepared to come and sleep outside for the sake of
this congress. Some people are saying to me ‘Morgan Tsvangirai has risen from
the dead’. They are saying our party is back on track,” he said.
Komichi, however, said it was up to the people to elect him
into the presidency.
“It is up to God and the people to decide the position they
want for me. That question is, therefore, really difficult for me to answer, it
is up to the people,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chamisa has ramped up his MDC Alliance party
structures to ring-fence his position and those of his allies, with his close
confidante Jameson Timba saying they would stop Mwonzora’s machinations.
“We are not worried about Mwonzora, he is a small boy. He
will be stopped politically. We are looking for solutions that will change the
country and not to satisfy a few individuals who are power hungry. This matter
will be decided by the people,” Timba said.
On Saturday, Chamisa’s loyalists gathered at the party
headquarters in Harare with legislator Johanna Mamombe where they vowed to
defend their youthful leader as lawyers brainstormed over a legal solution to
the leadership wrangle in the MDC camp. Newsday
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