Launching his
presidential bid for the country’s main opposition party at the weekend,
Mwonzora also said if he wins the MDC presidency during next month’s
extra-ordinary congress, he would work hard to end Zimbabwe’s deep-seated
polarisation.
This comes as Thokozani Khupe’s interim MDC leadership has
said that it is willing to form another government of national unity (GNU) with
Zanu PF to extricate the country from its long-standing political and economic
crises.
It also follows a
recent warning by another MDC bigwig and presidential aspirant, Elias Mudzuri,
that the current divisions devouring the
main opposition are making it difficult for the party to engage with Mnangagwa
and Zanu PF meaningfully.
“Our belief and commitment to dialogue is total. We believe
that dialogue should be genuine, inclusive and unconditional. “We will,
therefore, pursue dialogue as the principal means of resolving the national
question. “We are prepared to play our part in the social and economic
development of the country.
We will play our part in ensuring that there is love, peace
and harmony in the country,” Mwonzora said as he pitched his bid.
“To that end, we will work hard to change the politics of
Zimbabwe. We are going to do away with the politics of hate, rancour and
acrimony, as well as intolerance — and substitute all that with the politics of
rational disputation and tolerance.
“Chamisa is not my enemy. Chalton Hwende is not my enemy.
Welshman Ncube is not my enemy. Mnangagwa is not my enemy. My enemy is poverty,
joblessness. Our party, therefore, needs a new leadership with proven skills to
negotiate and dialogue with political opponents,”
Mwonzora said further. The respected lawyer-turned
politician is one of four candidates who have been nominated by the party’s
national council to contest in the congress that was ordered by the Supreme
Court in March to elect the substantive successor to the MDC’s late founding
president Morgan Tsvangirai.
The other candidates are Khupe, national chairperson Morgen
Komichi and Mudzuri. Recently, Mwonzora and the rest of the MDC’s Khupe-led
interim leadership said they were willing to form anothe GNU with Zanu PF.
Mwonzora also hinted that the MDC had already put in motion
plans to hold talks with Zanu PF, with regards to the mooted unity government.
“As the MDC, ever since we were formed (in 1999), we have always
been for dialogue. We think that Zimbabwe’s problems can be resolved through
dialogue.
“The problems of this country cannot be resolved through
confrontation, acrimony, rancour and violence. “So, yes, when the time comes,
when the internal process is done and when our consultations are completed, you
will see us calling for dialogue,” Mwonzora told the Daily News recently.
“There is enough historic evidence in this country to show
that most of the problems and big issues are resolved through dialogue. “The
liberation war ended with dialogue. The Gukurahundi in Matabeleland ended when
Zapu and Zanu signed the Unity Accord.
“In 2008, after Mugabe lost to Tsvangirai, we engaged in
dialogue to resolve that national question. “We will always be for dialogue,
but internal process will have to be done first,” Mwonzora further told the
Daily News.
Then, Khupe had also appeared to give a hint about the
mooted talks when she said she was ready to engage in dialogue with Mnangagwa
“to improve the livelihoods of 14,6 million Zimbabweans”.
In 2009, the late former president Robert Mugabe was forced
into forming a GNU with Tsvangirai, after the hotly disputed 2008 polls. The
short-lived GNU was subsequently credited with stabilising the country’s
economy, which had imploded in the runup to those elections.
However, Mudzuri has said it would be futile to think of
dialogue or a GNU without healing the divisions that are rocking the MDC. In a recent interview with
the Daily News, Mudzuri asserted that it was imperative that Khupe and Chamisa heal their rift first,
before the opposition could gainfully seek to engage ED and Zanu PF.
“As senior leaders in the MDC, we need to sit down and
talk. Everyone must accept his or her weaknesses, and we must tell each other
the truth. “Unity is the best way forward … we cannot continue fighting like
this. We are one family, we worked together for 20 years and it’s easy for us
to work together again. In Shona they say mukanetsana siyai peukama.
“Building unity is a process and it’s not a one day thing.
I think before 2023 we will talk together and find common ground,” Mudzuri told
the Daily News.
“We need to understand each other because we cannot engage
Zanu PF while we are failing to unite as MDC. “So, there is a need to talk to
each other before we engage Zanu PF. At the moment the opposition is divided.
So, Zanu PF will take advantage of that. “We must be able to talk to Zanu PF
because we are all Zimbabweans and we must build this country together.
“Factionalism must end so that we work to build our party.
As Zimbabweans, we must work to build strong government institutions,” Mudzuri
further told the Daily News.
This comes as Khupe and Chamisa have been engaged in a
vicious and futile fight for control of the MDC. The fight started after the
much-loved Tsvangirai died from cancer of the colon on Valentine’s Day in 2018.
The power struggles intensified following a recent Supreme Court ruling which
upheld last year’s High Court judgment that nullified Chamisa’s leadership of
the MDC. Daily News
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