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Dumiso Dabengwa

Midlands Correspondent
Dumiso Dabengwa’s Zapu is keen to join the MDC-Renewal Team led by Mr Tendai Biti, the party’s vice president, Ms Emilia Mukaratirwa, has said.
In an interview on the sidelines of a Zapu meeting held in Gweru last week, Ms Mukaratirwa said her party remained open and willing to form an alliance with Mr Biti and they were waiting for the former MDC-T secretary-general to approach them.
The Renewal Team is on record saying it was courting other political parties, including the MDC led by Professor Welshman Ncube, and Zapu, to form a grand coalition.

“We are open to such arrangements,” said Ms Mukaratirwa. “We remain very open to dialogue with other parties willing to form a grand coalition, but of course it has to be parties that share the same principles, values and objectives.

“However, there has not yet been anything formal. Therefore, we cannot give an official position regarding that, but we remain open to dialogue. There has not been anything offered with regards to the grand coalition and it is an issue that we would take to our constituencies in various provinces.”

Ms Mukaratirwa said previous attempts at a coalition had failed, citing a pact Zapu had with the Prof Ncube’s MDC in the run-up to the 2013 harmonised elections.
“We have been involved in some of these alliances or coalitions as some might call them,” she said.

“We had an alliance with MDC-N in the 2013 elections and we realised that we had the bitter end of these alliances. However, this time around we are going to be wiser.”

The Renewal Team is calling for opposition parties to unite in a bid to unseat Zanu-PF, but observers say such an alliance is a pie in the sky considering the power struggles rocking most of the opposition parties.

The Biti-led Renewal Team is in the process of finding its feet after breaking away from MDC-T led by Mr Morgan Tsvangirai over  the latter’s paucity of leadership.