'I'm not violent,' claims Tabitha Khumalo

MDC-T Bulawayo East legislator Tabitha Khumalo claims she is a misunderstood person and does not subscribe to violence.

Khumalo is not a stranger to controversy in both speech and eccentric behaviour.

The self-styled women's rights defender once advised wives to befriend their husbands' "small houses" as a stopgap measure to reduce the risk of contracting the dreaded HIV infection.
On several occasions in Bulawayo, she has been linked to factional politics, some of which has turned violent.

At one point, she stripped her top during violent skirmishes at the party's district rally in Bulawayo's Njube suburb.

MDC-T leader, Morgan Tsvangirai recently suspended her on suspicion that she had a hand in the assault of party deputy president, Thokozani Khupe, chairperson, Lovemore Moyo and organising secretary, Abednico Bhebhe.

On Thursday, she laughed off the charges she was a violent person "First and foremost I don't believe in violence.

"I have never been a violent person in my life, I believe in action," she told journalists at a function held at the Bulawayo Media Centre.

"The power of any individual is in the people, especially in politics.

"If I am working with the people on the ground and that means violence, then I am violent.

"When I am doing the door to door campaigns, roadshows or when I go and build dagga houses at Killarney squatter camp is that being violent? If that is being violent, then literary I am violent.

"I have no time for violence. I have time to capacitate and mobilise Zimbabweans to support this MDC Alliance as we are sick and tired of Zanu-PF."

Khumalo, MDC-T's deputy spokesperson, has had her suspension lifted.

With this latest drama out of the way, it is only a matter of time before she comes up with more eccentricities.