MDC-T plunged into crisis

Chronicle Reporter
THE MDC-T was plunged into crisis yesterday after a top official demanded that party leader Morgan Tsvangirai should stand down. Deputy treasurer Elton Mangoma, a former Cabinet minister during the Zanu-PF/MDC-T/MDC unity government, told Tsvangirai he should “consider leaving the office of the president of the movement”, a dramatic escalation of an internal party rebellion against his leadership.

Mangoma yesterday took the extra-ordinary step of releasing publicly notes of his discussion with Tsvangirai last week during a meeting also attended by deputy leader Thokozani Khupe and secretary general Tendai Biti.

The former Energy Minister told Tsvangirai that after the MDC-T’s crushing electoral defeat to Zanu-PF on July 31 last year, the party had been plunged into a “state of confusion, consternation and apprehension”.

He added: “The party is grieving from a crisis of leadership legitimacy, crisis of expectation and above all a crisis of confidence, externally and internally.”

Mangoma further added that a decision by MDC-T councillors to vote Zanu-PF mayors in Kwekwe and Victoria Falls had dented Tsvangirai’s leadership credentials.

The former Prime Minister’s many affairs and marriage crisis barely a year after his wedding had “left the brand of the party in disrepute”, Mangoma said, “culminating in appeals, internally and externally, for leadership renewal in the party.”

The MDC-T’s standing committee later met, reports said, and Mangoma’s calls for leadership renewal appeared to have the backing of seven of the 11 members. Three of the four senior figures still supporting Tsvangirai are believed to be chairman Lovemore Moyo, his deputy Morgen Komichi and organising secretary Nelson Chamisa.

Mangoma’s demands for leadership renewal follow months of internal attacks on the MDC-T leader, started by treasurer Roy Bennett and later echoed by senior figures Elias Mudzuri, Ian Kay and Eddie Cross.

Mangoma, Mudzuri and Biti are all seen as likely successors to Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai’s opponents say it would be better for the party if he stood down, but are prepared to accept the convening of an extra-ordinary congress to vote on a new leader.

But Mangoma warned Tsvangirai that if he clung on until the elective congress of 2016, which will be two years before the next elections, the party would split in the midst of a “nasty war of attrition”.

Yesterday, a top Tsvangirai aide insisted that Tsvangirai was not considering stepping down before 2016.
“There’re no extraordinary circumstances warranting an extraordinary congress except the extraordinary ambitions of those calling for one,” said the official, declining to be named.

“Unfortunately, Mangoma is not reading the party’s constitution properly. Clearly his mind is clouded by his hunger for power. It’s not the national council which calls an extraordinary congress; it is actually the party’s district and provincial structures and, at the moment, there are no issues coming from there. The only extraordinary issues are those Mangoma is creating in his mind.”