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Roundup: Leadership squabbles continue to haunt Zimbabwe opposition after leader's death

Xinhua,February 24, 2018 Adjust font size:

HARARE, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Leadership squabbles continue to haunt Zimbabwe's opposition MDC-T party following the death of its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, last week.

Tsvangirai died in South Africa on Feb. 14 after a two-year battle with colon cancer. He was buried in his rural home in Buhera this Tuesday.

On Friday, the party convened a consultative meeting to find a solution to the leadership wrangle that has even spawned violence within the party.

Acting party leader Nelson Chamisa told a press conference on Friday that two options had been proffered, either to hold a national council meeting or go to an extra ordinary congress to elect a substantive leader.

Last Thursday, the National Council appointed Chamisa the party's acting president, hours after the death of founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Chamisa's appointment is being contested by the party's two other deputy presidents, Elias Mudzuri and Thokozani Khupe.

Khupe is claiming that she is the rightful person to act as president since she was appointed vice president at the last congress in 2014 while Mudzuri and party secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora want the party to take the extra ordinary congress route to elect a new leader.

The party's congress, held every five years, is due in 2019.

Chamisa and Mudzuri were appointed by Tsvangirai in 2016.

Chamisa maintains that his appointment by the National Council, the party's highest decision-making body outside congress, is constitutional.

He argued that the power to appoint an acting president was reposed in the National Council.

"What we have done is perfectly constitutional. It's 100 percent legal," Chamisa told a press conference during the consultative meeting that was boycotted by Khupe and party national chairman Lovemore Moyo.

Khupe has not been attending party meetings for the past eight months.

Chamisa explained that the MDC-T president will automatically become the leader of the MDC Alliance, a coalition of seven parties that will challenge the ruling ZANU-PF party in the forthcoming elections set for mid-2018.

Chamisa reiterated his apology to Khupe and Mwonzora for the violence they suffered from party youths during Tsvangirai's burial on Tuesday.

He said the party will leave no stone unturned to ensure the culprits are brought to book. Enditem

 

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