Women executive defections: Sign of leadership crisis

From the look of things, the defections are an exhibition of disgruntled party members who feel cheated and betrayed by the leadership of Mr Morgan Tsvangirai. Their bone of contention is that, when they formed the party in 1999 they did so thinking that tenets of democracy will be the hallmark by which party activities will be executed.

They thought transparency would prevail but as years progressed it turned out to be otherwise.

Four weeks ago, MDC-T Manicaland Youth Assembly members announced their decision to ditch Tsvangirai and join the Renewal Team. They cited the use of organised intra-party violence and the imposition of party candidates among a litany of reasons.

For a moment the youths, who used to denounce the ruling Zanu-PF party calling it all sorts of names, vented their anger on their party leader whom they defended so well in the early days when things were running smoothly.
In their eyes, Mr Tsvangirai is the real threat to democracy.

Led by their chairman, Mr Dennis Simango, the youths said they were exercising their constitutional and democratic right to dissociate themselves from Mr Tsvangirai’s party.

Those who crossed the floor are Maxwell Mudhluri (deputy chair), Naome Baison (deputy secretary), Yeukai Mutangadura (treasurer), Amen Bungu (organising secretary), Cloud Nengomasha (deputy organising secretary), Muriel Rumhungwe (national representative) and Laston Julius (national representative).

Mr Simango said they made the ‘‘painful’’ decision to break away from the party because of a leadership failure.

“We . . . have met today and unanimously agreed and resolved to, among other things, endorse the Mendel National Council Resolutions in their entirety, exercise our constitutional and democratic right to disassociate from Morgan Tsvangirai (and) officially join our colleagues in the MDC Renewal in pursuit of democratic goals. Our reasons for this painful but necessary rupture are the use of organised and sponsored violence against party members by senior members of the party, personalisation of the party, imposition and importation of candidates in the 2013 harmonised elections (and) the party president strongly violated the party constitution by sponsoring and supporting a political party other than MDC (for example) in Makoni Central.”

The breakaway members also surrendered the MDC-T party regalia, saying they were now taking a different path.

“This should not be a secret and that is why we are doing it in front of everyone. From now on we are going to propagate the Renewal Team’s way. A lot of unconstitutional things were done by Tsvangirai which warranted automatic expulsion from the party. How can we associate with a party that denounces violence yet party leaders are busy hiring thugs to beat up senior party members?” said Mr Simango.

A case in point was the contentious Dangamvura-Chikanga constituency issue in which Mr Tsvangirai backed the candidature of Mr Giles Mutsekwa against lawyer Mr Arnold Tsunga who had won the primary elections.

“They imposed Mutsekwa against the wishes of the people in apparent defiance of the laws of the party. However, the people spoke and Tsunga won the election. In Makoni Central, Tsvangirai campaigned for Dr Simba Makoni of the Mavambo/Kusile Dawn, leaving his own MDC-T candidate in the cold. How can a party leader go haywire, discard his own MDC-T candidate and support another party? That’s an offence which calls for automatic expulsion from the party. So at the end of the day, we sat down and realised that we will not go anywhere with this kind of leadership. The democracy we were fighting for is nowhere near if we keep on following the likes of Tsvangirai,” said Mr Simango.

The following week, the party’s Women Assembly followed suit and threw in the towel, saying they had had enough of Mr Tsvangirai’s bed-hopping episodes which were bringing the name of the party into disrepute.

They said their leader’s actions were grossly violating women’s rights and thus he is not to be trusted.

Without mincing their words the executive members and representatives from the 26 constituencies in the province resigned from Tsvangirai’s camp saying the embattled party leader was trampling on their dignity by wantonly impregnating their folk.

They said he was splashing party funds to pay maintenance, damages as well as embarking on romantic trips.

Furthermore, the women said, as the fairer sex, they are against violence that has since erupted within the party ranks.

“When we formed this party in 1999, we said ‘no!’ to violence and corruption, but such vices are now prevalent in our party. Our leaders are now at the forefront of perpetrating such crimes.

“As women, we constitute 52 percent of the population and we have the biggest say in how our country should be run. Our leaders are impregnating some of us in total disregard of our dignity.

“Tsvangirai is using our money to pamper his girlfriends. There is gross misuse of our funds and the imposition of candidates in last year’s elections,” said Mrs Lina Mutape, who is the chairperson for Mutasa South constituency.

She said the failure by the leadership to solve internal disputes led them to follow a new route.

“We are now joining the Renewal Team because we formed it after realising that Tsvangirai was failing to put the house in order.”

The ongoing chaos will definitely have a telling effect on how the opposition party will fare in future elections. At present those at the grassroots are at the crossroads for they do not know who to follow because the pace at which the chaos is unfolding is giving them no room to think straight.