Tsvangirai Receives Major Boost With CSO’s Engagement

via RadioVop Zimbabwe – Tsvangirai Receives Major Boost With CSO’s Engagement 11 February 2015

MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai this week received a major boost in his bid to cajole the country’s influential civil society community after they turned up for a key meeting where he appealed for support to challenge President Robert Mugabe’s stay in power.

Leaders of influential civil society organisations turned up for a breakfast meeting convened by Tsvangirai on Tuesday in Harare where he reached out to them and appealed for a unified challenge to President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU PF party’s rule.

In his bid to appeal to the leaders of the civil society leaders, who have been disillusioned by Tsvangirai and his party’s state of affairs, the opposition leader outlined the state of his party’s affairs and how it would address the national crisis.

Informed sources who attended the meeting held in Harare’s Avondale said Tsvangirai emphasized the need to build a “national consensus” so as to resolve the country’s agonising political and economic crisis.
Among the key CSOs who attended the meeting were leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, a key ally of Tsvangirai who once led the labour union as its secretary-general, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CZC), the Election Resource Centre and the Labour and Economic Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ) among other organisations.

During the two-hour long meeting, LEDRIZ made a presentation on the “state of the economy” while the ERC share a paper on “election preparedness in the current landscape”.

The CZC presented on “possible scenarios to 2018”.

Tsvangirai was accompanied by his party’s lieutenants among them party secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora, Morgan Komichi, Dennis Murira and Luke Tamborinyika, his spokesperson.

The MDC-T, once a formidable party was weakened last year after the party split with former secretary-general Tendai Biti and former deputy-treasurer Elton Mangoma leaving to form a new party, MDC Renewal, which is also battling to lure some CSOs into its ranks