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From receiving just over 45,000 votes in the 2018 Zimbabwe presidential election to being sworn in as opposition leader in parliament, the political fortunes of MDC-T’s Thokozani Khupe have been dramatic.
Dressed in a shiny silver suit and a blue Covid-19 mask, Khupe, a former deputy prime minister during the power-sharing government of Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai between 2009 and 2013, took her seat in parliament to the chagrin of the MDC Alliance.
Speaking to reporters outside parliament, Khupe said she was the natural leader of the party. “I am the MDC-T’s highest-ranking MP at the moment, so naturally I am the leader of the opposition in the August house. I am happy to work for the Zimbabwe family, ”he said.
When Tsvangirai died on February 14, 2018, a leadership fight was secured between his three deputies: Khupe, Nelson Chamisa and Elias Muduziri. It was Chamisa who assumed the levers of power, but it was controversial since he did not reach Congress. This relegated the other two out of the party presidency.
What followed was Chamisa forming a coalition party with seven other political parties, most of whose leaders had been members of the MDC since its inception in 1999. Khupe, who among the three was the only elected vice president of the MDC-T in 2014, While the other two were appointed by Tsvangirai to balance domestic politics, he went to the polls in July 2018 as the MDC-T candidate.
She got a mere 3.32% when the elections turned into a two-man race, with Emmerson Mnangagwa from Zanu-PF getting 50.67% and Chamisa from MDC Alliance 44.39%.
Armed with a Supreme Court ruling, Khupe bounced back, in the process remembering lawmakers and councilors who joined the Alianza with Chamisa. The supreme court upheld an earlier ruling that Khupe, as vice president-elect according to the party’s 2014 congress, should be an interim leader until she calls an extraordinary congress.
It is for those vacant seats that he returns to parliament with a proportional representation ballot.
However, MDC Alliance spokesman Fadzayi Mahere said Khupe’s return to parliament was a fraud because he does not have popular support from the electorate.
“Khupe was rejected by the people in 2018. It is a fraud that she is now returning to parliament through the back door and as the leader of a party that won her by more than two million votes,” Mahere told reporters.
Last week, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga blocked parliamentary elections for council and parliamentary seats left vacant by retired politicians. This put a dent in the MDC Alliance’s plans to contest the seats. As such, MDC Alliance Secretary General Charlton Hwende said Khupe’s inauguration in parliament was “a sad day for democracy and the end of a people’s parliament” because President Mnangagwa has allegedly captured all the arms of the state.
Khupe is part of President Mnangagwa’s Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD), an organization of 17 political parties that sympathize with him.
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