RESOLVING THE SO-CALLED SPLIT IN MDC

Excerpts from Fingaz report (undated on internet ?last week)

The president believes there are some people in the party and elsewhere who are up to mischief, generating various documents purporting to amplify a position made in good faith by senior members of the party in favour of participating in the senate elections. These were divergent views which do not, in any way, mean that the party is in danger," Tsvangirai's spokesperson William Bango said.

They blamed this on a plot allegedly hatched with the connivance of "some western governments, the South Africans and influential players in business and the NGO community", to sideline Tsvangirai and create a coalition of those considered reasonable between some senior MDC officials and a progressive wing in ZANU PF.

"There is a ZANU PF dimension to what is going on. Both factions in ZANU PF hate Tsvangirai with a passion, he seems to be a stumbling block to a number of things. The group in the MDC wants to work with either faction in ZANU PF but find Tsvangirai as a problem because he pursues a simple political philosophy that shuns the boardroom and promotes a mass-line approach. His popularity has to do with that approach, which tends to put ordinary people at the forefront", another source said.

According to the sources the ZANU PF dimension was interesting in other respects. It sucked in foreign governments and key players in the business and NGO community. Way back in 2002, they said, there were concerted efforts and funding for an alternative leadership of the MDC. The argument then was that a solution was not possible in Zimbabwe because (President Robert) Mugabe and Tsvangirai could never be brought together. The best way out was therefore to find a coalition of the reasonable from both ZANU PF and the MDC and create an acceptable regime. The MDC would be the junior partner in that arrangement, holding the office of the prime minister.

Ncube and Chinamasa went on to agree and sign a document proposing constitutional changes in which the post of prime minister was one. Tsvangirai is understood to have taken Ncube to task over why he had already signed an agreement with Chinamasa without putting it either to the national executive, the national council or himself first.
The agreement had other contentious issues, which Tsvangirai felt were not well thought out and could plunge the party and Zimbabwe into problems.

"In addition, there were forays by (ZANU PF stalwart Emmerson) Mnangagwa and (retired general Vitalis) Zvinavashe, using colonel Lionel Dyke, but what is of interest is that the South Africans, the British and some European countries were keen to see this coalition of the reasonable taking over power, with a sanitised ZANU PF party largely in charge."






Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell