Zimbabwean Metro
14 November 2011
HARARE — Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was as ripped by serious divisions and suspicions as President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU- PF, Wikileaks cables from 2001 to 2005 show.
Local U.S. diplomats learnt of the chaos, infighting and poor organisational framework of the then opposition party after meeting scores of the MDC’s senior leadership — including then deputy secretary general Gift Chimanikire and other executive committee members such as Trudy Stevenson, David Coltart, Paul Nyathi and Tendai Biti.
Stevenson, now Zimbabwean ambassador to Senegal, was particularly scathing about her colleagues, making it clear to the Americans that she did not trust anyone in her party as she believed that many of her colleagues were ZANU- PF plants.
A fired up Stevenson told US diplomat Earl Irving in February 2001 that she did not trust her fellow members of parliament Tafadzwa Musekiwa, Job Sikhala and the Late Learnmore Jongwe, as well as Youth leader Nelson Chamisa because she thought they were ZANU- PF spies.
She said this group of MDC youths and others, whom she described as gatekeepers, stuck to Tsvangirai like glue and prevented anyone else from getting close to him.
She similarly did not trust Tsvangirai’s special advisor Gandi Mudzingwa either, adding emphatically: “I don’t trust anyoneâ€.
United states embassy officials did say that they had no evidence to substantiate Stevenson’s claims.
“We can say with a fair degree of confidence that her distrust of certain younger members is a result of ZANU- PF’s strategy to sow doubt and discord within the opposition party,†embassy officials said.
Coltart was scathing the party’s Information department, then led by Jongwe, describing it as a disaster.
He had no kind words either for the accounting department, calling it a mess.