Ncube to Tsvangirai: I don’t need your forgiveness

BULAWAYO – MDC leader Welshman Ncube yesterday said the labour-based party split because of former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s dictatorship, rejecting calls he is the one who derailed the movement.

Ncube was speaking for the first time following weekend reports that Tsvangirai told MDC-T structures that the former Industry and Commerce minister was responsible for the 2005 split.

The MDC-T leader reportedly said he would never forgive his fierce rival for weakening the movement by engineering the split. Ncube, in a statement to Southern Eye, said he did not need any forgiveness because he had not done anything wrong.

“Once again the MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai blames everybody else but himself for the unsightly politically mutilated figure staring back at him in the mirror,” he said.

“He knows very well that I, Welshman Ncube, have never asked for his forgiveness and will never do so for the simple reason that I have never done anything wrong for which his forgiveness will be desired.

“History has recorded that it was his dictatorship that caused the 2005 split of the united MDC.”

Ncube said the split was caused by Tsvangirai’s repeated refusal to accept collective decisions, “his penchant for unilaterally reversing collective decisions, his resort to violence as an instrument of political organisation, his frequent deployment of ethnicity as a political weapon and or shield”.

“Tsvangirai’s fixation with tribal paddocking never ceases to amaze, and it comes out glaringly clear in the Southern Eye edition of July 21 2014, in which he was reported as having professed his unadulterated hatred of my person,” he said.

Ncube said it was not proper for a leader of Tsvangirai’s stature to hold grudges and it was such a stance that made the reunification of the party difficult.

“While it is shocking to see a political leader publicly professing an inability to forgive, which in my view automatically disqualifies him as a leader, and while Tsvangirai has every right to hold on to his anger and hatred, I and the MDC bear him no malice,” he said.

“It should, however, be noted that it is this professed personal hatred that contributed making any attempts at reunification or coalition with MDC-T impossible.

“His confession reveals how insincere he was all along when he claimed he was interested in the same.

“For the avoidance of doubt, those who ask and are in need of forgiveness are those who have done or feel they have done wrong,” Ncube added. “While the split of the MDC remains a painful and distressing episode, I have no doubt in my mind that given the same circumstances as prevailed at the split of the MDC in 2005, I would make exactly the same decision as I made then.”

Attempts to reunite MDC floundered in 2008 after senior MDC-T officials reportedly blocked the move.

However, the split has been blamed for the opposition’s inability to dislodge Zanu PF from power. Southern Eye