The long-awaited case, which opened last week, is likely to unpack the root cause of the factionalism that continues to haunt the party led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.Sources say the case which arose in 2009 finally went for disciplinary hearing after Tsvangirai insisted that it be finalised. Some senior party officials were accused of trying to block it in a bid to protect the two politicians. Mutsekwa, who has been jointly charged with Prosper Mutseyami, the MP for Musikavanhu in Mutare is accused of “bringing the name of the party into disrepute.” The charges have been linked to the violence that rocked the aborted restructuring exercise led by the party’s organising secretary, Elias Mudzuri who was threatened with “logs” in one of his visits to the province. Information reaching The Stan-dard indicated that rowdy youths blocked Mudzuri from holding a gap-filling exercise, charging that he was a Karanga out to remove Tsvangirai from the helm of the MDC-T. The Standard was told the youths embarked on an orgy of violence that forced Mudzuri to abandon his mission. Ironically Mudzuri was in June last year demoted from his post as Minister of Energy and Power Development in a surprise cabinet reshuffle by Tsvangirai. Mutsekwa was also removed from the influential Home Affairs portfolio, in what was seen as an attempt by the MDC-T leader to deal with internal divisions in his party.Mutsekwa and several MPs from the province are accused of “complicity to the fiasco in Manicaland in that they failed to protect their seniors from unwarranted attack.” The disciplinary hearings are led by prominent Harare lawyer Chris Mhike. Mutsekwa is also accused of obstructing the work of the teams led by Mudzuri and his deputy Tapiwa Mashakada.Mhike said the hearing was an internal party matter and referred questions to the MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa who said “we have nothing to communicate at the moment on the issues you are referring to.”However The Standard was told that the matter was a hot potato in the MDC-T and the manner the disciplinary hearing was handled was raising eyebrows since the people who were affected by the violence were not called to give evidence last week. There were suggestions that a senior party official was keen to have the charges against the two dropped. Mutsekwa and Mutseyami could not be reached for comment yesterday.
