WATCH LIVE as Gambakwe Media looks at the secret meeting between Zimbabwe President, ED Mnangagwa and MDC-T President, Douglas Mwonzora.
Speculation has been rife following the meeting with the Standard newspaper reporting that Mwonzora said:
“There were two things,” he said. “The thing was that I went to pay a courtesy call as leader of the opposition in Parliament to the president and head of state.”
“The second one was to deliver the MDC’s concrete proposals for dialogue as I was instructed by the congress.
“The meeting was cordial and respectful.
“The president, who was accompanied by the vice-president undertook to reply to our proposals after which we would have formal discussions on the matter.”
“Currently I am not at liberty to disclose the proposals because they are yet to be responded to, but they were procedural matters as well as substantive matters.”
Some Polad members are also unhappy that Mnangagwa is seemingly going back on his word not to hold any talks outside the controversial Polad platform.
“We did not have a meeting today and if what you are saying happened, it had nothing to do with Polad,” said a Polad member, who requested to remain anonymous.
Speaks exclusively to Gambakwe Media, MDC-T Spokesman, Witness Dube said
MDC-T adopted dialogue as a grand strategy at the 2006 Congress where it resolved to bring Mugabe and Zanu PF to the negotiating table, “screaming and shouting” as it were then. The roadmap to this strategy resulted in the GNU, and the new constitution that was adopted in 2013.
The same strategy resulted in the opposition working with the current government in making sure that Mugabe resigned and paved way for fresh ideas in our political scene.
When President Tsvangirai passed on, he was in conversation with His Excellency President Mnangagwa on how to emancipate Zimbabwe from its current economic, political, and social quagmire. His Excellency and his government showed interest in dialogue very earlier on when they visited President Tsvangirai at his Highlands home. President Mwonzora is on a path that was started by President Tsvangirai and His Excellency President Mnangagwa and his government.
Further to that, MDC-T recently held a two day leadership retreat at Mabvazuva Resort in Harare where it affirmed the pursuit of dialogue based on concrete proposals that were to be put in our position paper, whose input was gathered in that retreat from both leadership and technical support teams from within and outside the party.
It is therefore disingenuous and regrettable for anyone in the leadership of our party to plead total ignorance of both the principle, content, and initiatives on dialogue by President Mwonzora when this is driven by a roadmap that has always existed in the party, and has been affirmed unanimously in all our recent past meetings.
It is on the basis of dialogue as a strategy that President Mwonzora met His Excellency President Mnangagwa and his deputy last Friday, and received our humble proposals as a party for the sake of putting *sadza/isitshwala* on all our people’s tables.
Details of our proposals will emerge naturally as dialogue unravels. Ours is not a vainglorious grandstanding venture, but a serious effort we intend giving the due diligence it deserves by respecting our engagement with His Excellency and his government. In other words, we will not negotiate through the press, suffice to say we are in pursuit of known goals that the MDC has stood for since its formation.
Please watch the video above this post for more details.
