Big test for Mujuru, ZPF

Source: Big test for Mujuru, ZPF – DailyNews Live January 6, 2017

Mugove Tafirenyika

HARARE – Former Vice President Joice Mujuru and her Zimbabwe People First
(ZPF) outfit’s political weight will be put to test in two weeks‘ time
when her party participates in the Bikita West by-election.

With opposition parties under pressure to perform from Zimbabweans who
have suffered for more than three decades at the hands of President Robert
Mugabe and Zanu PF due to their misrule, many people are waiting to see
what value Mujuru – the nonagenarian’s former second-in-command – will
bring to opposition politics.

Since her brutal ouster from both Zanu PF and the government in late 2014,
as well as her subsequent formation of ZPF the following year, Mujuru has
been shying away from participating in such polls – leading cynics to say
that this was because she still harboured ambitions to return to the
ruling party.

ZPF and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC have, together with
other smaller parties, coalesced under the banner of the National
Electoral Reform Agenda, where they are demanding electoral reforms to
level the playing field which they say is heavily tilted in favour of Zanu
PF.

But a confident ZPF spokesperson, Jealousy Mawarire, told the Daily News
yesterday that his party would win the Bikita West by-election, in which
their candidate is Kudakwashe Gopo.

“We have lined up the president’s (Mujuru’s) rallies in the constituency
in the coming few days and our campaign is going on well. Our message of
peaceful engagement to build our country is resonating well with the
people  of Bikita West,” Mawarire said.

In a previous interview with the Daily News, Mawarire has also rubbished
the possibility of Mujuru re-joining Zanu PF, saying that it did not make
sense for her to do this as their party has, since its formation, grown in
leaps and bounds to a size bigger than the ruling party’s.

“Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) has grown bigger than Zanu PF. It will be
folly for someone in the case of Mai Mujuru, who started a political party
that is bigger than Zanu PF to even contemplate going back to Zanu PF
which is disintegrating every other day.

“If she were to go back to Zanu PF, which Zanu PF will she go to, because
there are so many splinter groups. There is Lacoste, G40, Grace, Mugabe
and his group and expelled war veterans on the other hand,” Mawarire said.