Democratic revolution has lost focus - Biti

The deterioration of the Zimbabwean economy and general social decay in not only a reflection of government failure but also of the opposition's, former Finance minister Tendai Biti has said.

Biti, now fronting the formation of a new party after an acrimonious fall-out with erstwhile opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, told a provincial consultative meeting in Chinhoyi over the weekend that the country's political leadership was critically detached from reality.

"When the MDC was formed in 1999, 80% of Zimbabweans were employed in the formal sector, and the labour movement was at its peak. Now 15 years later (and) as a sign of our failure to deliver on the mandate of the workforce given to us at formation, 75% of our people are spending excruciating hours eking out a living out of selling mobile phone airtime cards and tomatoes," said Biti.

"We have a leadership that is not even aware that our people cannot afford basic food and that is why they cannot react accordingly to save citizens".

He said the democratic revolution in Zimbabwe had been hijacked and has lost focus.

"Our revolution has been stolen, hijacked and lost focus, and it is a generational challenge on us to return it on track. We have a generational challenge to bring democracy to Zimbabwe, and failure is not an option.

"We have failed to deliver on the central strategic objective of why this party was formed and we need to return to our founding values to achieve that. We make no apology for believing in constitutionalism and democracy," the former treasury chief said, ruling out chances of reconciliation with Tsvangirai.

Biti said the MDC-T made a judgemental error of the fight that was before them at formation.

"Our mistake was to think that we were in for a sprint, which we would just go into and walk to State House (Presidential residence in Harare). Now we have no illusion that this will be a marathon in which leadership will have to change hands before we get where we want.

"While we had anticipated that change would come earlier, it has been delayed because some people thought they had arrived during the coalition government."

Following the MDC-T's humiliating loss last year, cat-calls for Tsvangirai's resignation grew, leading to a violent fall-out early this year in which some top leaders were attacked by rowdy youths angered by the calls.

After Tsvangirai presided over the suspension and subsequent expulsion of deputy treasurer general Elton Mangoma and others, Biti then convened a national council meeting that also suspended the party president and six other top acolytes.