Morgan Tsvangirai
Upenyu Chaota
The Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC-T has moved to allay festering fears within its grass-roots that the opposition party’s unity with Zanu PF in the quest to get rid of Robert Mugabe was tantamount to dicing with the enemy.
Zanu PF fought and won the battle to remove Mugabe as their leader but it reached out to the opposition for help when the nonagenarian initially refused to resign.
Mugabe finally tendered his resignation through the National Assembly on Tuesday, November 21, after the legislature had sat to impeach him.
After successfully participating in the march on Saturday last week, Zanu PF secretary for legal affairs Patrick Chinamasa banged the door in the face of all opposition parties saying they will not get anything since what was happening was all a Zanu PF cake.
Since then MDC-T supporters have had mixed feelings over the opposition’s involvement in Zanu PF affairs, with some saying the opposition party must watch from a distance as the ruling party implodes rather than help to stabilise it.
“If MDC means Mugabe Dismiss Choir then helping Zanu PF with five votes to impeach Mugabe is mission accomplished for us, but if it means Movement for Democratic Change then we have to stick to our founding values of bringing real change to our people.
“We cannot be seen dining with the enemy. Rather, we should distance ourselves from Zanu PF problems and watch it fall apart, not to help create another dictator. Chinamasa’s utterances say it all. These guys will soon forget we helped them, and they will come back to force us to support the dictator that we are helping to create,” said one member on conditions of anonymity.
However, MDC-T national spokesperson Obert Gutu said that they have everything under control and their people should not worry.
“We are the ones who started with the motion to impeach Mugabe through parliament but we did not have the majority. Now that those in Zanu PF saw the light and moved the same motion, we had to support them.
“Chinamasa’s statements were misplaced and very unfortunate but our people should not worry because we are their leadership and we will never betray them. To dislodge a dictatorship like this one needs chipping off one piece at a time.
“A journey of a million miles begins with one step and we have sacrificed a lot on personal levels for the bigger picture. With Mugabe now out of the way, we have set the ball rolling to remove the whole system,” said Gutu.
MDC-T vice president Nelson Chamisa took to Twitter saying the party needed to fight the whole Zanu PF system.
“Beyond fighting individuals, we must fight the repressive system as a whole. The next battle is to make the slogan that politics controls the gun. Impeaching the dictatorship as a whole ought to be our goal,” said Chamisa.politics
