A founding signatory of the MDC Alliance, Professor Welshman Ncube, says when the seven political parties agreed to a coalition, they made no agreement that a leader of the MDC-T automatically becomes the leader of the alliance.
The only provision that was stated under the alliance, said Prof Ncube, was that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the then MDC-T, who at that time was still alive was to be the leader of the coalition.
In Tsvangirai’s absence, his party would second a name that other alliance partners would approve of and any other statement contrary to this are lies, indicated Prof Ncube who is the MDC Alliance vice president.
The MDC Alliance was created in 2017 when Tsvangirai’s MDC-T, Prof Ncube’s MDC, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led by Tendai Biti, ZimPF led by Agrippa Mutambara, Transform Zimbabwe led by Jacob Ngarivhume, Zanu Ndonga and Multiracial Christian Democrats (MCD) convened by Mathias Guchutu agreed to work together in the 2018 polls.
However, a faction of the MDC Alliance parties led by Douglas Mwonzora, president of the MDC-T who won the presidency at a 2020 congress after the Supreme Court had ruled that Nelson Chamisa as an illegitimate leader of the opposition party, laid claim to the alliance name and warned the Chamisa led alliance party to stop using it.
Mwonzora reportedly met with some principals of the coalition at Harvest House in August where they acknowledged him as the leader of the MDC Alliance, alleging that was “in line with the constituting document of the alliance” and that the “meeting re-asserted full commitment to the alliance agreement.”
Despite Mwonzora’s camp using the law, some have questioned how he can now be the leader of the MDC Alliance when the alliance and MDC-T competed as different parties in the 2018 elections.
In an interview with CITE on the Breakfast Club Monday, MDC Alliance vice president, Prof Ncube said such statements coming from Mwonzora’s side on who is supposed to lead the alliance were a lie.
“The lie of all of these repeated brazen lies is now we are told whoever is the leader of MDC-T at any given time is the leader of the MDC Alliance. There is no such and has never been such a provision in the MDC Alliance agreement,” he said.
Prof Ncube said the only provision that was specifically stated in the alliance agreement was that the candidate for the 2018 election was to be Tsvangirai.
In his absence, his party -the MDC-T, would then second a candidate to the alliance subject to the approval of the rest of the coalition partners, he added.
“And that is all. Nowhere is stated that whoever is leader of the MDC-T shall be the leader of the MDC Alliance. More importantly the alliance agreement did not provide for the nature of the relationship amongst these persons if we did not win the election and form the government,” Prof Ncube said.
The MDC Alliance vice president indicated that provisions under the alliance agreement only dealt with what was to happen if the coalition was to win the 2018 elections.
“The provisions which were in the alliance agreement, were dealing with what would happen in the event of us winning the election and basically becoming the government. If we did not become the government, there is nothing in that alliance agreement which provides for what is being claimed that the alliance shall subsist until 2023 and shall be led by whoever is the president of the MDC-T. All of that is errant nonsense,” Prof Ncube said.
“There is nothing like that in the alliance agreement so all of these make believe things are a creation in order to constitute a false narrative that an opposition created by the state is in fact the official opposition.”
He also noted that the MDC Alliance was made up by the founding MDC leaders whose goal was to unite and have a coalition to take down Zanu-PF.
“Let me take you back to history, where (the late) Morgan Tsvangirai called myself and Tendai Biti to his house when he was relatively sick. He says, ‘Guys we let down the people of Zimbabwe when we split the MDC. I want, as Morgan Tsvangirai, to leave a legacy, to live a united people’s project. Are you guys with me on this?’ Both me and Biti said, ‘we are with you, let us put back the humpty dumpty,’” Prof Ncube revealed.
