Tsvangirai's significant political announcement

Today, I welcome all of you here at the party headquarters to announce a very significant political development.

On Friday last week, we met as the elected senior leaders of the party, the National Standing Committee. The meeting was a grueling five hours of honest and frank discussion on the developments in the party and in the country.

After that frank heart-to heart session, we all unanimously agreed that our disagreements in the cockpit, while confirming our credentials as a democratic party, had needlessly diverted attention from the key issues affecting the people of Zimbabwe. But we had realized it was important for us to sit down as the party leadership to openly discuss and sort out our issues.

I am proud to announce today that we have discussed our issues and there is now unprecedented harmony and unity of purpose in the MDC cockpit. We all agreed that we owed it to the members of the party and to the nation at large to discuss and resolve our matters so that we would be more effective in providing hope and a credible alternative to Zanu-PF.

I can assure you that in those five-hours of no-holds barred discussions, we told each other the brutal but honest truth that will save this party and ensure the security of the faith and trust the people have bestowed on us.

After all, the last national executive meeting early this month recommended that the standing committee members should meet alone to discuss and iron out their issues in the cockpit. So we complied by having frank discussions with each other last week. I am happy to say that we have all found each other.

As you can see, we are the great team that we have always been since the people gave us the mandate to be at the helm of this party; a mandate given to us at the Congress in Bulawayo in 2011. We all agreed on the supremacy of Congress as the forum that makes and unmakes leaders in the MDC. We all agreed that the fixation with the MDC and specific individuals in the cockpit as if they were at the centre of the national crisis was both needless and unnecessary.While disagreements are necessary in a democracy, they have to be resolved. And we have just resolved ours.

The concept of dynamic contradictions drives our democracy as a party. As all of you saw, it is only in the MDC where one can finger-point at their leader or publicly declare their ambition. Ambition is not criminal in the MDC and the robust debate confirms the democratic credentials of this great people's movement.

Mr Mangoma is not here because the national council, the party's supreme decision-making body outside Congress, has suspended him pending his appearance before an independent disciplinary tribunal. He is still very much one of us and he is innocent until proven guilty. At the end of the day, we are a team and we will swim or sink together.

As a united leadership, we are bigger and better and we will able to confront the challenges facing the people of Zimbabwe.

We have created a big tent for everyone and I can restate here that no one already inside is moving out of the tent. This party is not splitting and as a leadership in our collective sense, we all know our responsibility to our membership and to the people of Zimbabwe. I have said it before that there are many who had mistaken the robust debate in this party as a sign of disintegration.

I can assure you that this party is alive and well. The rallies in the countryside that I have addressed, the latest being at Watsomba business centre in Mutasa district on Sunday, have shown that the ground remains solid and unshaken. The people still have unstinting faith and hope in the MDC and its leadership as the only alternative that will resolve the debilitating crisis facing the country.

Once again, we tear to shreds today the premature obituaries of this great movement that some of you had begun to write.

And once again today, we confound sceptics and put to shame the perception of the MDC as a party in turmoil and a movement in disintegration.

We have found each other in the cockpit. Our erstwhile friends in the struggle continue to come into the tent as we mount a united front against the real authors of the national crisis who are clueless on how to solve the problems facing the people. So we are coming together once again. We are bringing the spirit of 1999 in this big tent that continues to grow every day.
 
The crisis facing the people of Zimbabwe is greater than individual egos, unbridled ambitions and our disagreements in the cockpit.

The people have invested so much in this great movement. Only on Saturday at a rally at Tafara in Chipinge East, I saw a cheerful MDC cadre who lost a leg in the Zanu-PF-led violence of 2008. But despite losing his leg, there was still a beaming smile and abundant hope planted on his face when I saw him on that sunny afternoon.

We will not let him down, together with many others across Zimbabwe who have suffered in this our tenacious struggle for positive change in the country. It is those people who continue to guide some of us in the national leadership of this struggle.

 I want to conclude by reassuring the nation that the MDC leadership is determined more than ever to complete this journey of democratic change that we started in 1999. Now that all this over, we are concentrating on the important programmes of  renergizing the base through the holding of rallies and public meetings throughout the country.

Ours is the people's project and we are not losing focus on the important things such as preparing for the net election and being a credible alternative to this Zanu-PF government that has dismally failed to deliver even on its election promises. The country is on its knees and we have a serious national crisis on our hands as a country. Now they cannot even ay government workers their salaries.

All of us in the cockpit are confident that the positive change, for which many Zimbabweans paid the ultimate price, will definitely be achieved well within our lifetime.

I thank You