'Nothing grand about grand coalition,' says MDC-T official

The MDC-T deputy national organising secretary, Abednico Bhebhe, has scoffed at efforts by the leadership renewal team lead by Tendai Biti to come up with a 'grand coalition', saying they are 'little people' with 'little parties'.

He also said there was nothing 'grand' about a coalition without his party and Zanu-PF.

Speaking at a public meeting in Bulawayo on Thursday, Bhebhe said MDC-T holds the panacea to the opposition efforts to dislodge the ruling Zanu-PF party and as such, removing it from the picture will produce no result as the rest of the opposition parties were small and insignificant.

"We are not worried about little people with little parties coming together, there is nothing grand about that coalition. MDC-T and Zanu-PF are the only mainstream parties in Zimbabwe and planning a coalition, MDC-T is a joke," said Bhebhe.

MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been inviting other opposition members to come and join the 'big tent' in his bid to create a formidable opposition, whilst a coalition that will see Zimbabwe's opposition parties (excluding MDC-T) merging to form what is being termed the grand coalition is being mooted.

Bhebhe's sentiments were met with much rebuke by leadership renewal member Samuel Sipepa Nkomo who said they could not join hands with Tsvangirai because he was selfish, while his 'big tent' which he has been inviting people to was actually leaking.

"We might be called a coalition of small parties but in effect will be big. An ant killed an elephant (sic). Small as you think we are, we cannot join the so called big tent because it is leaking
and will continue leaking until there is nothing inside," said Nkomo.

Meanwhile, Nkomo revealed that one of the reasons he left the mainstream MDC-T were the internal squabbles directly caused by Tsvangirai, which squabbles had moulded him (Tsvangirai) into a monster which could not accept criticism.

"There was serious discord in the party.

"The disgruntlement was never addressed by the leadership, and I could not continue to bury my head in the sand and pretend that everything is okay. We had to depersonalise the party. We cannot have a party being called by a person's name," said Nkomo.