By Never Kadungure
Professor Welshman Ncube, leader of the smaller MDC faction, was this week counting the political cost of attacking Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, after calling him an “uneducated person who has no capacity to deal with the country’s problems”. Ncube was addressing a paltry crowd of less than 100 people at a rally in the Torwood suburb of Kwekwe on Saturday.
- Poor crowds like this at Professor Welshman Ncube’s rallies show he is going nowhere fast
The remarks however backfired spectacularly with Zimbabweans from all walks of life branding the former University of Zimbabwe lecturer, arrogant, pompous and accused him of insulting millions of people who might not have been able to get a good education because of a variety of factors including a previously collapsed economy that saw many dropouts over failure to pay fees.
“The people who started the struggle for Zimbabwe’s liberation in 1957 were aware that for them to win over white colonialism they needed an educated leader . . . now Zimbabwe has more complex problems than those of 1957. Business has collapsed, factories ruined and schools have all but collapsed and these require a leadership with vision and capacity, which only this party has, not a tea boy (referring to Tsvangirai),” said Ncube at the poorly attended rally.
“Tsvangirai cannot perform miracles and solve problems of our nation. That era ended with Jesus who performed them a long time ago,” Ncube added. Tsvangirai did not need to respond to this attack. Riding on his popularity his supporters came out fighting in their thousands and spent the week attacking Ncube on internet forums and other platforms.
“Oh Ncube give us a break, what have you got to show for all the degrees you got. You are the minister of industry but industry is collapsing, the unemployment rate continues to shoot up. Stop the cheap politicking and work on your numbers because 100 people at a rally is truly pathetic,” one reader wrote in our forums.
Another wrote, “I disagree with Mr Ncube. I do not believe one needs a stream of degrees to be a good leader. If education was a qualification for good leadership then Zimbabwe would be one of the best economies in the world considering how educated Mugabe is. This kind of thinking only shows how divorced Mr Ncube is from the people. Only shows if he were to get into power he would not stand for the down-trodden and the uneducated of society.”
Another reader wrote, “What vision does Ncube offer, if at all he cannot provide one to a small faction of the MDC. We hear only a hundreds of people attending his rallies whereas Tsvangirai’s are attended by thousands. Who then has a vision? If you cannot appeal to the majority then you should know that you are not inspiring. In other words, you are limited, vision wise.”
Stung by the criticism Ncube spent the week trying to explain himself and claimed “For the record, during a rally over the weekend I quoted a statement made by a number of business people that I had met with at Mzinyathini during the week.
“My point, however, remains that we need people with the intellectual and technical capacity to take us forward as a country. And if the people who wrote the article then decided to fit the shoe that fits to whomsoever, then that is another matter altogether.
“If you want to fly from Harare to Bulawayo, as much as you may have someone who is popular but only has the ability to ride bicycles, their popularity will not help them to fly that plane. You need someone with the capacity to fly planes. That is my point and that of the nationalists that I quoted and on that I stand by my words knowing the validity in them.”
In the March 2008 parliamentary elections Ncube a Professor of Law lost the Makokoba seat in Bulawayo to former NRZ security guard and trade unionist Thokozani Khupe who ran under the MDC led by Tsvangirai. Ncube has in the past been accused of trying to play on regional sympathies but the strong showing of the MDC-T particularly in Bulawayo in 2008 diminished his chances of succeeding.
Meanwhile last month Tsvangirai told thousands of party supporters at a rally in Mbizo, Kwekwe that: “Ncube continues to attack me over my leadership because he has nothing to offer the electorate. What I want to tell him is that he should concentrate on running his own party while he lets me run mine, then the electorate will decide who they want to trust with running this country.”
