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The Interview with Fortious Nhambura
The Harmonised elections have come and gone. Zanu-PF emerged as the biggest winner, white washing the MDC-T in many parts of the country. The MDC-T is, however, challenging the results. Our senior reporter Fortious Nhambura spoke to one of the contestants in the election Zimbabwe Democratic Party president Kisinoti Mukwazhe on the conduct of the elections and other issues.
FN: Mr Mukwazhe, you were one of the presidential candidates in the 2013 elections. Can you tell our readers who is Kisinoti Mukwazhe?
KM: I am a Zimbabwean. I come from Masvingo Central. I have been in politics since early 90’s and I am keen to see my country developing that is why we formed the Zimbabwe Development Party. As a Zimbabwean, I am following the Constitution’s position that every Zimbabwean has the right to form or support a political party he or she wants. That is Mukwazhe, he wants to be respected in a way he respects others as a Zimbabwean. The ZDP was formed on February 4, 2008
FN: You decided to quit the race a few days before the elections and people summed you as one of the spoilers, infact they said you succeeded Egypt Dzinemunhenzva in trying for a poll you know you can’t win. How do you respond?
KM: It is very unfortunate that some other people will regard me as a spoiler. People must raise their concerns responsibly. Every Zimbabwean knows that the ZDP is a political party with good intentions for the country. We intend to see the country move forward and develop it for the betterment of the people. We raised the concern some years back about the Political Parties Finance Act when we said as a political party we need to be funded and we were never funded. The Act on political parties blocks us getting financing from the fiscus. That to us is not fair play.
The withdrawal of ZDPs president from the race was because we were incapacitated and had no funds to participate in the way Zanu-PF, MDC-T and MDC had. You know the President used to fly from this end to there in a helicopter, and those who were backing him were using Government resources, MDC-T the same, they were getting funds from the fiscus where Zanu-PF was getting as well.
That is why we withdrew and gave support to a political party which is strategically positioned to move the country forward for the betterment of the people.
FN: But why decide to quit the race a few days before the election? Where you not disappointing supporters?
KM: There were so many challenges, the media houses are polarized and biased. The private media have been in support of MDC-T, the State media was covering the Zanu-PF side and MDC-T and we were not very much covered so the playing field was not even. So we said let people with the same muscle wrestle and see the winner. We call them financial giants not political giants.
ZDP is a political giant because after we withdrew from the race, those who did not hear that Mukwazhe had withdrawn from the race went on to vote and 9 000 is not a small figure, almost half of what (Dumiso) Dabengwa who did not withdraw garnered. What if I did not withdraw? What if we had money? We were really going to cause big time trouble for the so-called big political parties, Zanu-PF and MDC-T. I would not like to mention MDC-N because in comparison to ZDP, it’s a small political party. You must know that from this time ZDP is sitting on number three and we are working hard to become the biggest political party.
We gave our support to Cde Mugabe after realizing that he was strategically positioned and our policies and Zanu-PFs almost rhymed. We said let us throw it to Cde Mugabe and we know we were not losing out.
The winning of Zanu-PF is the winning of ZDP because when you are player number four and pass the ball to number nine who then scores, the team wins. ZDP has won the elections and the MDC T has never won anything because it failed to read the situation on the ground.
The country should know ZDP won the elections though it did not win them directly because it surrendered its votes to the political party which eventually won.
FN: You mentioned the issue of the Political Parties Finance Act but have you raised the matter with the authorities?
KM: We took the issue up to the Constitutional Court and it dismissed our application. They did not give us reasons. We needed at least US$1,5 million to prepare and run in the elections. Until this day we do not know why our application was dismissed.
FN: You once declared that you were going to win the elections; did you really believe that you could beat President Mugabe or Morgan Tsvangirai in the election?
KM: We were in the process of fundraising we thought we would stand the same chances as the other political parties. Our greatest impediment was that we did not have resources like what they had not even a quarter of what they have.
We actually had more strength than Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations because we had the people on our back but with no money. Those who had money managed to pull through. We did not want just to contest for the sake of contesting when we are seeing the reality that with no funds you cannot move forward.
FN: We seem to know only of Mr Mukwazhe in ZDP does the party has structures? If so how many candidates did you field in the elections?
KM: ZDP is a very big political party, look at the support that we got in the election. It is not Mukwazhe only. We do have structures all over the country. We have a national chairperson, provincial chairperson; we have treasurer and secretary general just like other parties.
FN: Did you field any candidates in the election?
KM: Yes we did.
FN: How did they fare?
KN: They failed in the same scenario we did not have funds, others did not have posters, and some not even one. Those who were to stand as members of parliament had no resources. Imagine some of them garnered as much as 800 votes without even a single poster.
FN: Any names of people in your party who contested in any of your constituencies?
KM: It is very disappointing to hear such a question from you now that elections are over you should have asked us whether we had people on the ground to contest.
Asking this question now is an insult to us. I am not comfortable to talk about that because we were expecting this media house to ask us such a question at this hour.
Online Reporter