Paul Nyathi|The EFF’s firebrand Commander In Chief Julius Malema has been invited to attend the MDC’s elective conference that will be held in Gweru later on Africa day weekend in May, ZimEye.com can reveal.

Malema will be joined by Kenya’s former prime minister Ralia Odinga amongst other opposition political party leaders in the continent who are yet to confirm attendance after invitations by the MDC have also been extended to them.

According to reliable sources within the MDC who requested anonymity at the stage, invitations have already been sent out to more than a dozen leading political leaders in Africa including EFF leader Julius Malema to attend the congress.

“Among the list of invited dignitaries will include diplomats and civil organisations from various embassies based in Zimbabwe and political leaders from the African continent,” said the source.

More than 9000 delegates are expected to converge at Ascot stadium in Gweru for the opposition party’s 5th elective congress where Nelson Chamisa will attend uncontested.

This will be the first time the new look United MDC will hold an elective congress without founding leader the late Morgan Tsvangirai.

Tsvangirai’s MDC had a “T” at the end – which stood for Tsvangirai himself. This was to distinguish his MDC from the Welshman Ncube MDC which had cut ties with Tsvangirai. Ncube was the founding secretary-general of the MDC.

Just before he died Tsvangirai had agreed to bring back former “rebels” who had been founding members of the party. This included Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti and Job Sikhala. For his part, Chamisa agreed to accommodate and rope in his former “comrades-in-arms” into his election campaign.

The coalition under their umbrella became known as the MDC-Alliance party just before Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections. The reason for the name change was that former MDC member Thokozani Khupe was arguing in the courts that her formation was the bona fide MDC-T.

The MDC Alliance has since completed its integration of alliance partners to rename the party by its founding name MDC leaving Khupe running with the MDC-T name.

Malema will attend the congress fresh from a gruelling election set for this Wednesday in South Africa where he is fighting to increase his party’s six percent representation in parliament to a higher stake where they are targeting at least 25%.

So far the youthful leader has done very well matching the giant ruling ANC pound for pound in the election campaign rallies.