Tsvangirai to speak on coalition

MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai will make an announcement on the proposed grand coalition to fight President Robert Mugabe this week, a senior party official revealed yesterday.

Douglas Mwonzora, the MDC-T secretary general, hinted at a rally in Ruwa that the opposition party preferred Tsvangirai to lead the coalition that is also likely to include former vice-president Joice Mujuru.

"The president will make an announcement on this but we want a candidate who has beaten Mugabe before," he said.
"A candidate with no blood on his hands, a candidate who has shown performance related promises when he was once in government."

Tsvangirai is the only candidate who has beaten Mugabe in an election since independence, but failed to reach the threshold required for him to assume leadership.

Tsvangirai was also the Prime Minister in a coalition government with Mugabe, which most people claim transformed the country's economic fortunes for the better.

The former premier is negotiating a coalition pact with other opposition leaders who include Zimbabwe People First's Mujuru, People's Democratic Party leader Tendai Biti and others.

They are already working together under the banner of National Electoral Reform Network (Nera) to push for electoral reforms.

Meanwhile, Mujuru yesterday told a rally in the United Kingdom that Zimbabweans owed Tsvangirai respect for his courage.

"Tsvangirai and his team, they taught us courage, that we did not have, something that even shocked us in Zanu-PF regardless of the fact that I am a trained soldier," she said.

"He understood that the liberation struggle was fought to bring us freedom to challenge our leaders."

Mujuru, who appealed to her followers to stop judging her on her past association with the "corrupt and insensitive" government of Mugabe, said the 92-year-old Zanu-PF leader was a bully feared in his own party.

"Mugabe lost direction of the values of the liberation struggle but we could not challenge him internally because we feared him, some insecurities and also because I was young," she said.

Mujuru said Mugabe was a loner who was dragging the whole country into darkness with policies that he introduced even without consultation. She claimed to have supported the policies out of fear and respect for Mugabe.