Mkhosi: I Dumped MDC for Rejecting Opposition Coalition
Church leaders tried their best to convince our group to form a coalition with others in the run up to the 2013 polls but there was strong resistance from some senior members
WASHINGTON DC — Some members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formation led by Professor Welshman Ncube say they decided to leave the party after senior leaders refused to unite with other factions of the MDC. Former senior member, Edward Mkhosi who recently crossed the floor to join the Morgan Tsvangirai MDC, said some church leaders tried to bring the MDC factions together but the Ncube faction strongly resisted such moves. Mkhosi said this resulted in him and other senior members, including former Insiza lawmaker Siyabonga Malandu Ncube, to abandon the faction, which failed to win a single seat in the 2013 general elections. “The church leaders tried their best to convince our group to form a coalition with others in the run up to the 2013 polls but there was strong resistance from some senior members of the party. We literally went the wrong way and that is why Zanu PF rigged the elections. They knew our weaknesses and took advantage of that and won through crooked means,” he said. Mkhosi said he quit following some members of the MDC’s refusal to unite with other MDC formations after the elections. “We need to fight as a united front in order to dismantle Zanu PF’s rigging machine. There is nothing we can do to fight this regime if the opposition is fragmented,” he said. But a senior MDC member dismissed Mkhosi’s remarks as wishful thinking. The MDC which was formed in 1999 has several factions that split from the main party due to what activists say are ideological differences. In the 2008 presidential elections, Tsvangirai got 47.9 percent votes compared to Mugabe’s 43.2 percent – requiring a run-off. But the MDC claimed that it had amassed more than 51 percent needed to form a new government.