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Lloyd Gumbo Senior Reporter
The envisaged coalition between Zimbabwe People First led by former Vice President Joice Mujuru and People’s Democratic Party fronted by Mr Tendai Biti has suffered a stillbirth with senior officials from the two camps clashing on social media recently. The clash followed the defection of PDP deputy president Mr Samuel Sipepa Nkomo to ZimPF last Thursday together with other officials in Matabeleland provinces.

PDP spokesperson Mr Jacob Mafume said his party was no longer interested in having a coalition with Dr Mujuru’s party because of their “big brother mentality”. The clash followed the recent defection of PDP members to ZimPF with the former vice president of that party, Mr Samuel Sipepa Nkomo being the high-profile defector.

Following the announcement by Mr Sipepa Nkomo that he had joined Dr Mujuru’s party on Thursday, ZimPF, national management committee head of research and strategy, Mr David Butau tweeted: “My take is that all the members of PDP must take this opportunity to join the people first family. Welcome!”

In another tweet, he said: “Let’s allow these fine gentlemen time to make up their minds. We are united.” But this did not go down well with Mr Biti who retorted: “Are you for real?” In another tweet Mr Biti said: “We genuinely thought you guys were decent and bona fide. Self-evidently, we were wrong. ZANU-PF is a culture & system you can’t kill overnight. #Shame.”

Responding to Mr Biti, someone with Twitter handle, Mlambo G Stanley said: “It won’t be a bad choice to join ZimPeopleFirst (ZimPF) to fight ZANU-PF, you have what it takes & I think you will be stronger together.”

But Mr Biti responded: “Never” Someone responded: “That’s unfortunate. It is a sign that they are still selfish and the liberation of Zim from oppression is not their priority. Egos abound.” Contacted for comment, Mr Mafume all but confirmed that the coalition negotiations between the two opposition parties had reached a dead- end.

“We, as opposition are learning a valuable lesson on how to treat Zanu-PF rejects. We have to attend their political funerals and not the resurrections as we have been attempting to do.

“If a party can be dishonest on pre-election and coalition talks, how are they to be believed when they are in power? We must, as Zimbabweans, learn to retire people and not try to recycle them like we are a Delta factory gone mad or maybe we cannot as goats vote for an exiled hyena to lead us. When it becomes hungry, it will eat us all,” said Mr Mafume.

It is understood that PDP officials are not happy with the defections that have rocked its party with its officials joining ZimPF. But ZimPF spokesperson, Mr Jealousy Mawarire dismissed claims that they were poaching PDP members.

He said it was not the duty of Mujuru’s party to “make PDP retain its support base”. “People are not poached but attracted to political parties, mind you poaching has an element of illegality,” said Mr Mawarire.

“Coalition talks do not stop individual party programmes such as mobilisation and recruitment. It is not our business as ZimPF to help those political parties that we are in talks with to retain their support base.

“The issue is, they are hurt because Sipepa Nkomo has joined us. But you should appreciate that Nkomo is not a political novice. We should respect that he made his independent decision to join ZimPF.” Mr Mawarire said if PDP wanted out of coalition talks, ZimPF would not stand in their way.