MDC riven by internal divisions one month after founder Tsvangirai’s death

ZIMBABWE’S opposition Movement for Democratic Change is again suffering internal divisions before elections, only a month after its founder Morgan Tsvangirai died.

In the past few days, the party has expelled three executives – its deputy president, national spokesperson and organising secretary – while its chairperson has quit in sympathy.

After the executive of its national council met in Harare on Friday, the MDC said deputy president Thokozani Khupe had been expelled because she held “illegal meetings, spurned efforts to address grievances and put the party into disrepute”.

Chairperson Morgan Komichi said the expelled members would be recalled from parliament.

After it became clear that Tsvangirai’s colon cancer was not responding to treatment, he appointed two vice-presidents, Elias Mudzuri and Nelson Chamisa, making it clear he did not trust Khupe, who was elected to her post at the party’s congress in 2014, not least because she is a woman and from the minority Ndebele tribe. She does not have national support, but remains popular and powerful in her home area in Bulawayo.

Khupe did not support the establishment of an anti-zanu-pf bloc, the MDC Alliance, which Tsvangirai believed was the only way to win elections against the powerful Zanu-pf which, often through fear and intimidation, controls the rural areas where more than 60% of the population lives.

At his funeral, a group of of acting president supporters Nelson Chamisa, the man Tsvangirai hoped would succeed him, attacked her and she had to run for cover. Two weeks later, violence erupted in the party’s Bulawayo office but only Chamisa’s supporters were arrested and charged.

Khupe had said she should be acting president after Tsvangirai died and that the only way she could be replaced was via a congress. Chamisa’s loyalists say there was no time to hold a congress ahead of elections in July.

The MDC’S national council says Chamisa will be its candidate in the presidential poll which runs alongside parliamentary, senate and local government elections.

Khupe continues to control the party’s provincial office in Bulawayo despite a recent High Court order barring her from keeping the office locked.