The MDC Alliance led by Nelson Chamisa is on a charm offensive to lure back some of the party’s founder members that fell by the wayside during previous splits as the battle for the soul of the country’s largest opposition party gathers pace.
Chamisa’s rivals in the MDC Alliance, Douglas Mwonzora and Morgen Komichi a fortnight ago threw their weight behind MDC-T leader Thokozani Khupe after the Supreme Court ruled that the main opposition party’s 2018 presidential election candidate was not the legitimate leader of the party.
Khupe was given the mandate to organise an extraordinary congress within three months to elect a successor to the party’s founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai using the 2014 structures.
Chamisa has remained mum about the judgement, but MDC Alliance insiders said his lieutenants were hard at work pushing to pull the rug from under the former deputy prime minister’s feet by wooing the party’s founder members to fight in his corner.
MDC Alliance secretary-general Chalton Hwende confirmed that some former party members had shown interest in recent weeks to retrace their footsteps to Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House.
Hwende said a committee led by the party’s deputy president Welshman Ncube had been tasked to handle the issue, “On day-to-day basis, we receive enquiries from former members and some of them from the MDC-T who want to come to the MDC Alliance and we have set-up a committee, which is led by vice-president Welshman Ncube, which also includes the national chairperson [Thabitha Khumalo] to deal mostly with former senior members who want to come back to the party,” he said.
“Without mentioning the names of the people, yes, I can confirm that there are a lot of former members who have indicated their interest to come back to the party.
“The politics is clear that someone is either with Zanu PF or MDC and we are calling for the people to join the MDC Alliance.”
Some of the former heavyweights whose names have been mentioned among those interested in joining the MDC Alliance are former Speaker of the House of Assembly Lovemore Moyo, who now leads the United Movement for Devolution (UMD), MDC-T chairman Abednicho Bhebhe, former Water and Climate minister Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, and top leadership of Zapu.
-The Standard