Lovemore Moyo raise the ire of MDC-T Bulawayo provincial executive

MDC-T national chairman Mr Lovemore Moyo has raised the ire of the party's Bulawayo provincial executive after allegedly scuttling plans to hand over a communiqué denouncing the recent appointment of two additional vice presidents.

The Bulawayo executive, with strong links to vice president Ms Thokozani Khupe, according to sources, planned to hand over the communiqué to Mr Moyo during the meeting of the national council and national executive in Harare on Wednesday.

The meetings endorsed the appointment of Mr Nelson Chamisa and Engineer Elias Mudzuri as additional vice presidents. Before the meeting, the appointments had been strongly opposed by Ms Khupe and members of her faction resulting in a standoff with MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai at the party's national council meeting last week.

According to party insiders, Mr Moyo did not attend the meeting and in the process scuttled the entire plan to hand over the communiqué.

"The Khupe faction is not happy with Moyo. It was planned that he would receive the communiqué protesting the appointments and hand it over to the president. However, Moyo at the last minute said he could not make it to the meeting," said an MDC-T insider.

"The absence of Moyo disturbed everything and the Bulawayo executive returned with the communiqué without handing it over."

In the stand off between Ms Khupe and Mr Tsvangirai last week, Mr Moyo reportedly sided with the vice president arguing that the appointments were illegal.

"This led the Khupe faction into believing that Mr Moyo was sympathetic to their cause but they were wrong. It turned out that Moyo was not totally against the appointments but had issues with some processes he felt had been skipped leading to the appointments," said the source.

"The Khupe faction then put their hopes on Moyo receiving the communiqué and handing it to the presidium but that was not to be as he did not attend the meeting. After realising that Moyo was no longer coming, the Bulawayo executive then abandoned their plan."

It was revealed that in the communiqué, the Bulawayo province accused Mr Tsvangirai of among other things, regionalism and making attempts to weaken Ms Khupe within the party.

"In the communiqué, it was written that Mr Tsvangirai's appointment of the two VPs was to weaken Khupe and that there were tribal undertones to the way the appointments were done,' said the source.

MDC-T Bulawayo provincial chairperson Mr Gift Banda dismissed the reports saying: "That is very far away from the truth. We had a position as a province that we presented and debated but as per the dictates of democracy, the majority voice ruled.

"We never had a communiqué and besides if we had the communiqué, the vice chairperson was there, it would have had the same impact. The claims of a communiqué are therefore not true."

Efforts to get a comment from Mr Moyo were fruitless.