'We knew we would lose the polls,' says MDC-T

The acting chairperson of the MDC renewal team, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo on Sunday said they knew their party would lose to Zanu-PF before contesting last year's general elections as its candidates were woefully resourced.

Speaking to about 500 members of his party at Stanley Hall in Bulawayo, Nkomo who won the Lobengula constituency on an MDC-T ticket, said party leader Morgan Tsvangirai's love for power had cost his party.

"Some of us knew we would lose the elections because we were there before we got there," Nkomo said. "Tsvangirai was already saying come August 1, I will be at State House. Where is that State House?"

Nkomo said Tsvangirai's priorities were wrong as he spent party money on issues relating to his love affairs instead of oiling the party's campaign machinery.

"When you become party president you do not borrow money from the party to pay for your loves," he said, amid applause from the audience.

Nkomo said MDC-T candidates in last year's elections were woefully underfunded.

"The Zanu-PF candidates were given $10 000, a Ford Ranger, so many T-shirts and other campaign material, while as an MDC-T parliamentary candidate I was given by my party $700 and then $800 for T-Shirts," he said.  "The council candidate got $100.  The party money was spent on paying Lorcadia (Karimatsenga)."

Tsvangirai is reported to have paid about $300 000 to Karimatsenga who claimed he had married her and dumped her to get her off his back.

Nkomo said Tsvangirai had gone against advice by the Sadc facilitation team on Zimbabwe, South African president Jacob Zuma and his adviser Lindiwe Zulu as well as Botswana  president, Ian Khama,  not to go into the polls before security sector, media and electoral reforms had been implemented.

"As his executive we also counseled him against going into the polls without those reforms, but he (Tsvangirai) thought we wanted to delay his journey to State House," he said.

Nkomo said his party would not take part in any elections before those reforms are done.

He said  the MDC renewal team also  resolved on April 26 this year at Mendel Training Centre that it would not allow anyone to "personalise" the organisation, as Tsvangirai had done with MDC-T which even had  his surname as part of its name.

"The culture and cult of building people and making them monsters is over," he said.  "When we go to congress as a party and elect a president that president could not be God."

Nkomo said a leader was expected to be God-fearing and not be promiscuous.

Addressing the same gathering, the party's secretary-general Tendai Biti decried the "personalisation and privatisation" of MDC-T by Tsvangirai.

He said Tsvangirai had failed in 15 years to lead MDC to power, but still clung on to the position.

"He cannot say President Robert Mugabe has overstayed when he is refusing to go himself," said Biti.  "He should not say the people still want me because that is what Mugabe has also said.  He should not say the party will die if I leave it because that is what Mugabe says."

He said if Tsvangirai had given up leadership of the MDC-T after realising he had failed, he would have saved himself from being a "national embarrassment".

"The problem in Africa is that leaders don't know when their time is up," he said.

Biti said his party was giving hope to Zimbabweans for a better future.

"Today, here in Makokoba, the oldest township in Zimbabwe, we are saying no to 34 years of Zanu-PF misrule and not to 15 years wasted by a post-liberation movement," he said.

Biti said  the MDC renewal team was going back  to the founding values of the MDC.