Vanguard leader, Shakespear Mukoyi has said MDC youths engineered Nelson Chamisa’s ascendancy to power. He told Newsday “During the ti...
Vanguard leader, Shakespear Mukoyi has said MDC youths
engineered Nelson Chamisa’s ascendancy to power.
He told Newsday “During the time when Tsvangirai was on his
deathbed, my brother Hwende and other leaders approached me saying the
situation was bad and the party needed new leadership.
“They told me that the work that they were about to do had
to be done by the youth assembly, especially the Vanguard, which they are now
dismissing as thugs today. We fought to bring sanity in the party until we had
this hierarchy that we are having today,” the vanguard commander said, in
apparent reference to the violent attacks on dissenting voices in Bulawayo and
Buhera following Tsvangirai’s death.
“I feel betrayed that they say The Vanguard is bad, yet
they are the ones who were behind the operations of The Vanguard. This is bad.
Maybe, as leaders they, have their wisdom to say that, but I don’t think that
is right.”
“I feel like our leadership is not sincere and honest.
Before the primaries were held, I approached our party president (Chamisa) and
had a talk with him concerning that constituency,” Mukoyi said.
“I said to him: ‘God has blessed you to become the
president, and I, as a party member resident in Kuwadzana, who has stood with
the party through thick and thin, can you bless me to take over from you?’ The
president said he has no problem with it and he actually expected that from
people who have worked hard for the party.”
But Hwende yesterday refuted Mukoyi’s claims, saying it was
not true that Chamisa had “blessed him” with the Kuwadzana East seat.
He also dismissed allegations that the Vanguard had engineered
Chamisa’s rise to the party presidency.
“That is nonsense and as far as we are concerned, only the
national council elected Chamisa to be the president. I am not aware of any
other person who did that,” said Hwende, who claimed he had been actively
involved in Kuwadzana since 2000 when he was campaign manager for the now late
former legislator Learnmore Jongwe and later campaigned for Chamisa in 2003.
“Besides, the party called for applications from aspiring
candidates and I submitted my name. The party cannot decide to give a
particular seat to anyone just like that, it is not how democracy works. If he
has grievances with Chamisa, he must direct them to the office of the
president,” Hwende said.
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