Editorial Comment: Zim needs progressive opposition

THE MDC-T is once again embroiled in a leadership wrangle pitting Mr Morgan Tsvangirai against party members led by secretary general Mr Tendai Biti. This is a throwback to October 2005, when Mr Biti’s predecessor — Professor Welshman Ncube and then vice president Mr Gibson Sibanda — announced Mr Tsvangirai’s suspension from the MDC for leadership failure, violating the party constitution, using party youths to bash opponents and sowing division in party structures.

This is the same charge sheet unveiled by Mr Biti after Saturday’s national council meeting that resolved to suspend Mr Tsvangirai and five of his close associates, namely party vice president Ms Thokozani Khupe, national chairman Mr Lovemore Moyo, deputy national chairman Mr Morgen Komichi, national organising secretary Mr Nelson Chamisa, his deputy Abednico Bhebhe and spokesperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora.

The latest charge sheet, however, also incorporates alleged financial impropriety and a taste for the jet-set lifestyle at the expense of the party.
Surprisingly, Mr Tsvangirai and his group, instead of introspecting as to why the questions that afflicted the MDC ahead of the 2005 split have recurred nine years down the line, is busy pointing fingers at imaginary enemies in Zanu-PF, State security agents and the Professor Welshman

Ncube-led MDC, whatever remains of it, yet the common denominator in 2005 and 2014 is Morgan Richard Tsvangirai and his weaknesses.
What emerges from the fulminations by the Tsvangirai group is a childish predilection for refusing responsibility for their actions, itself a serious indictment on their pitch for high office.

We hold no brief for Zanu-PF or any of the factions in the MDC-T, what we simply want to see is a patriotic, progressive opposition party that will keep Zanu-PF on its toes.

It is not a secret that from its launch on September 11, 1999, the MDC has held a brief for ex-Rhodesians, white commercial farmers and Westerners keen to preserve the colonial status quo in Zimbabwe.

MDC-T leaders fought and opposed every initiative aimed at moving our independence from the political to the economic dimension which is why voters severely punished them in last year’s harmonised elections.

Mr Tsvangirai should be man enough and acknowledge that he has failed to transform the MDC from a Western creation to a Zimbabwean party; from a protest movement to a progressive, viable opposition party that can legitimately challenge for national leadership.

He should either be the change he has always claimed to want or heed political opponents who are telling him it’s time to leave the stage.
Unless Mr Tsvangirai does that, he will continue misleading his party to ever more ruinous, acrimonious splits.