Open letter to Jacob Mafume and Renewal Team

Dear Jacob Mafume,

Thank you for your email informing of the postponement of a kangaroo gathering that you want to make the world believe was a legitimate hearing to preside over a case in which your confused, nameless party, accuses Morgan Tsvangirai, who is the leader of a rival political party, of a number of violations.

If you were educated people, you could have borrowed a leaf from Gorden Moyo who, in stepping down as MDC-T Provincial Chairman, tendered his resignation to the Secretary-Generals of both MDC-T and your nameless party to avoid confusion as to whether he had joined your party, currently known as The Renewal Team, but as said by Tendai Biti at several meetings, will some time in the future find a name of its own.

If Gorden  will make up his mind and join the Renewal Team, or go back to the MDC-T, that is his democratic right, and he is free to do as he pleases, but the point is that there has been an official split, and while the mainstream party that is lead by Morgan Tsvangirai has chosen to retain the name MDC-T, you are still in the process of finding a suitable name, or you have already found one but you are awaiting an opportune time to publicly announce it.

Tendai Biti made it very clear that you guys had exercised your democratic right to dissociate with Tsvangirai and several other leaders of the MDC-T, although in your confused minds you also suspended them, while dissociating yourselves from them. The whole act showed you are confused and do not know exactly what you want.

After that you made it abundantly clear that you were going to form your own party, a statement that has been quoted widely by both the media you think is after destroying you, and that which has been trying to prop you up and undermine your rivals the MDC-T.

At this rate you are proving that you are just desperate attention seekers who have nothing new to offer to the suffering people of Zimbabwe. Instead of spending time preparing your policies, you waste time trying to drag the leader of a rival party to your own disciplinary hearing, what a shame. Zimbabweans had hoped you were genuine in improving their plight, but you have proved otherwise, and in the process risk both your professional and political reputations.

My guess is that the complex legal issues which stopped the hearing are that you failed to find credible lawyers who wanted to risk their reputations, wasting their time in a hearing of a leader of an opposition party.

If you were serious, you would use your time building up your political structures in preparation for a congress to elect your leadership.

Please, do not waste our precious time by sending us rubbish of this nature. If you have real issues to share, I am available, although I do not belong to your party. I have noticed that you guys have embarked on a scheme to make false announcements about people who you say have joined your team.

Last night I got called by a sister who was almost in tears after she heard Morgan Tsvangirai had been told by some of your officials that she had joined the Renewal Team.

I explained to her that I had observed the strategy under which you intend to frustrate Tsvangirai by peddling falsehoods that some of the people close to him have defected, and when The Herald quoted you saying “This we are doing for strategic purposes. We had agreed that our members whom Tsvangirai thinks are still with him will be dumping him every week as they announce their joining the renewal cause”, I knew my theory was right.

Let those who want to leave do so, but do not go about fabricating lies about people who haven’t told you they have left the mainstream MDC.

To prove that you are losing credibility, the lawyers you had hired to preside over the case are now dissociating themselves from the arrangement. You are a real embarrassment not only to the nation, but to yourselves.

Wake Up Jacob and your colleagues in the Renewal Team

Benjamin Chitate