Biti rules out Tsvangirai re-union

Leader of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) Tendai Biti, who this week suffered a heavy blow after his party was hit by further defections, has vowed never to return to the MDC and work with its president, Morgan Tsvangirai.

This is despite the MDC willing to work together with its former members - including Biti and others whose political fortunes appear to have received dents in recent weeks.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily News, Biti said rejoining the MDC was not an option.

"I will never go back to the MDC, never! In capital letters never, over my dead body! I can work with the MDC in a coalition anytime," said Biti.

"Any time I will work with Tsvangirai, anytime I will work with Joice Mujuru, anytime I will work with Simba Makoni, Welshman Ncube but in a coalition, never

by way of joining any of their parties.

"That is politics, people leave, and people go. If you go to Kenya right now the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) is losing people, it's the nature of the beast.

"Those who have left we wish them good luck but we are made of sterner stuff, we are going to have a conference in November just come and see who will replace them. We are the party of the future, the party of ideas, the thinking men and women's party and we don't come with a baggage of exhausted nationalism and neo-nationalism," added Biti.

This week the MDC said it was leaving the door open for former party bigwigs - including Biti, Ncube and Elton Mangoma - to rejoin the movement as it fine-tunes its machinery in preparation for the eagerly-anticipated polls in two years' time.

MDC secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora speaking at a media briefing in Harare - to welcomed back several former senior officials who had left the party together with Biti to form the PDP - said "these are tale-tell signs of the type of animal that the party is going to be come 2018".

Among them were former deputy Indigenisation minister Tongai Matutu and ex-Glen View MP Paul Madzore, who crossed back from Biti's PDP - which also recently lost its deputy leader, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, to the fledgling Zimbabwe People First (ZPF), sparking a war of words between the two parties.