Several members of a faction of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have broken ranks to rejoin Morgan Tsvangirai’s side, reports said on Thursday.
Blessing Chebundo, the MP for the mining town of Kwekwe left the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara earlier this week.
He said he was leaving for ”very personal reasons.”
Another senior official, the former chief executive officer of the now-defunct Daily News, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, has also left Mutambara’s faction although he has not yet joined Tsvangirai’s side, he confirmed on Thursday.
”They’ve not spoken to me. I think I want to consider it when they approach,” he said in a telephone interview.
The MDC was split in two late last year, when Tsvangirai overruled an internal vote in favour of participation in elections for a controversial new senate.
Tsvangirai, one of the founders of the MDC in 1999, was opposed to taking part in the senate but other party officials felt he should have respected the will of the party. Those officials left to form a rival side, now headed by Mutambara, a professor of robotics.
In a further blow to Mutambara’s faction, five lower-level party representatives based overseas also sent in their resignations.
”We have come to the conclusion that our aspirations and contributions to the Zimbabwean political process will not be realised by our affiliation to that grouping,” said the five, led by Silence Chihuri, the faction’s secretary in Scotland.
A spokesperson for the Mutambara-led faction said he wished those who had defected ”good luck” and denied that his faction was losing strength.
”We wish them good luck. Like we have always said, the struggle is not a stroll in the park,” Paul Themba Nyathi was quoted as saying in Thursday’s edition of the state-controlled Herald newspaper.
He said the defections ”were not a reflection that the faction was losing grip of its membership but a development that is to be expected in any struggle”, according to the paper.
Mutambara was elected head of the MDC faction in a burst of optimism at a congress in February. But his rival Tsvangirai appears to command larger crowds. – Sapa-DPA