Biti side-lines party leader Holland?

via Biti side-lines party leader Holland? 26/10/2014

SEVERAL months after the move by disaffected members to break ranks with the mainstream MDC-T party and form the rival Renewal Team, Tendai Biti is yet to allow the group’s interim leader Sekai Holland to fully assume her duties.

The ousted MDC-T secretary general has been hogging the limelight ever since he led the April split from the Morgan Tsvangirai-led opposition party.

One of the resolutions passed during the Renewal team’s meeting at Mandel Training Centre in Harare was to expel Tsvangirai and a handful of his top officials and to hand over, in the interim, the party’s affairs to the MDC Guardian Council chaired by Sekai Holland.

Holland said during her September press briefing she had finally decided to dump Tsvangirai and was immediately assuming leadership of the renewal team, widely referred to as the Biti faction.

But over a month since she made the announcement, the former national healing co-minister is yet to take control of the fledgling party with the more domineering Biti apparently crowding her out.

Since the split, Biti has travelled throughout the country addressing the party’s structures, something that has become a virtual campaign platform to eventually assume leadership of the MDC faction.

Holland, just like interim chairman Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, has been in Biti’s shadows, with strong signs she may not be allowed to take a more prominent role.

Biti has also eclipsed Elton Mangoma, the architect of the MDC leadership renewal gospel which triggered his sacking from the opposition party.

However, Jacob Mafume, spokesperson of the MDC rebels, denied Holland was finding it difficult to take a more prominent role ahead of Biti, who is often greeted as “president” by party structures.

“The Mandel statement was very clear that the leadership of the party, if you look at Clause 10 of the constitution, was given to the Guardian Council,” Mafume said.

“She (Holland) is the president of the guardian council and they were mandated to prepare for the congress and that is what she is doing.”

“Our party is called the MDC Renewal Team. What we do not want is a messianic leader complex or a saviour complex that is afflicting other political parties which are defined by one person.

“Ours is a new way of doing things that is why we are saying renewal – the courage to do things differently. We believe that leadership is a team concept.”