The Supreme Court is on Tuesday afternoon expected to hand
down judgement on who the legitimate leader of the MDC is between MDC Alliance
leader, Nelson Chamisa and Thokozani Khupe, who leads a rival faction of the
opposition.
Khupe tweeted that her lawyer, Lovemore Madhuku had told
her that the Supreme Court will hand down judgement at 3pm on Tuesday. “I call upon our members and supporters to remain calm and
accept whatever the outcome of judgement is,” she tweeted, her first tweet in
more than a year.
“In unity let’s
renew an build our great party and country.” Last October, the Supreme Court reserved judgment in the
case where the two are battling for control of the MDC.
The decision was made by Justices Paddington Garwe,
Antoinette Guvava and Bharat Patel.
During the Supreme Court hearing, Khupe had urged the
judges to recognise the opposition’s party structures that existed in 2014 when
the opposition party was being led by its late founder Morgan Tsvangirai.
Khupe won a High Court case, but Chamisa appealed at the
Supreme Court.
In her submission, Khupe said High Court judge Justice
Edith Mushore did not misdirect herself when she ruled that the MDC
constitution does not provide for the appointment of more than one deputy
president as was done by Tsvangirai when he appointed Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri
in 2016.
“The High Court was correct to find that the MDC
constitution does not provide for the appointment of more than one deputy
president … There was no provision for more than one deputy president, hence in
2014, there was only one deputy president, being the third respondent (Khupe),”
Madhuku said at the time.
Khupe was voted in as MDC-T’s deputy president in 2014, but
years later, Tsvangirai appointed Chamisa and Mudzuri as his deputies.
She argues that this was in contravention of the party’s
constitution and that for that reason, she should have assumed leadership of
the party when Tsvangirai died two years ago. Newsday
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