Besides being warmly welcome and acknowledged by the MDC President Nelson Chamisa at the burial of Vimbai Tsvangirai on Thursday, MDC-T leader Dr Thokozani Khupe claims that she was not treated well by the opposition party and its supporters.
Speaking to state media on the sidelines of the burial ceremony, Dr Khupe claimed that MDC supporters called her derogative names with some threatening to force her away from the burial proceedings.
The former MDC Deputy President condemned the behaviour and called on MDC supporters to stop what she called politicising funerals.
“As you can see today is a sad moment for all of us where we have come to mourn the passing on of Honourable Vimbai and also to celebrate her life. She was our founding president’s daughter and we had lived with her all our lives.
“But when people come to mourn, they must mourn. This culture of coming to funerals to hijack and turn them into political rallies must come to an end, and I mean this culture must come to a stop. It is unacceptable, it is uncultured, it is not Zimbabwean and I have never seen that,” she said.
“We have opportunities to go out there and do rallies, but to do that here is unacceptable, I have never seen such. Even the one who has departed, I don’t think she is happy, if they can indeed see I don’t think they are happy with what they see here today. When people come to funerals, they must do exactly what they have gone there for, I hope and trust that these people will learn and change their behaviour especially when we come to funerals, people should also respect the dead”.
Dr Khupe also spoke about the ongoing national political dialogue where she said the initiative is good for the people of Zimbabwe.
“When we are in dialogue, we are doing it for Zimbabweans, we are saying we want things to change but we cannot change things by going out there throwing stones, by burning tyres, by destroying people’s shops but we only resolve issues by discussing issues and this is what some of us are doing.
The MDC President, instead took the occasion of the burial proceedings to express his respect and honour for Khupe inviting her back into the party and calling on the party supporters to continue valuing her contributions to the party.
Said Chamisa, “I honour you Dr Khupe. Dr Khupe once more I salute. You were my Deputy Prime Minister while I was Minister, you were my Vice President while I was your Spokesperson.
“Yesterday I told Dr Khupe yesterday that we will unite one day. The Seniority of Dr Khupe is not defined by Congress and her seniority is not questionable.”