Former vice-president Joice Mujuru says she will support any leader chosen to lead a coalition against President Robert Mugabe in next year’s elections.
By Everson Mushava
Mujuru made the declaration in an interview with the BBC during her recent visit to Britain. The interview will be screened tomorrow under the respected programme, HardTalk.
The National People’s Party (NPP) leader said coalition talks with former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai were progressing well and they were now drafting a memorandum of understanding (MoU).
“We have been in talks for the coalition with Morgan Tsvangirai,” Mujuru said.
“It is part of the process we are carrying out now which I can’t say who is who, but it is part of the results that are going to come out.
“Between Tsvangirai and myself, we are working together, we have done some addresses together and right now, we are working on an MoU so that we are able to work together.”
Mujuru has been in coalition talks with Tsvangirai since last year when she was still Zimbabwe People First leader before the party split last month due to differences with former allies Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa.
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There have been fears that the acrimonious relationship between Mujuru and her former allies would scuttle the coalition talks with the MDC-T leader, who has on the other hand promised to engage both factions.
“Anyone who is chosen according to our discussions, I will be able to work with,” she added.
Mutasa has already endorsed Tsvangirai — the only opposition leader to hand Mugabe his first electoral defeat in 2008.
Mujuru was also quizzed on why she intended to forgive Mugabe if she wins in the 2018 general elections after the humiliating way she was haunded out of Zanu PF.
“My party is not for retribution, but for restitution. We have to encourage people to forgive but not to forget. We cannot continue to lead in the past,” she said.
“We should be busy thinking of how best we should move forward.”
On the 1980s Matabeleland and Midlands massacres also known as Gukurahundi, Mujuru said she was partly to blame as someone who was in government according to the concept of collective responsibility.
But she said it was unfair to blame everyone who was in government at the time because the atrocities were not executed by the regular army.
Mujuru also disputed claims that she looted diamonds from Chiadzwa, saying the term “Churu ChaMai Mujuru” (Mujuru’s hill) was a joke created by villagers involved in a flower export project she initiated at Hotsprings, Mutare. The project was a major source of foreign currency.
She said when diamonds were discovered, people started claiming that they now had their project similar to the horticulture project. Mujuru said villagers teased each other about the “Churu chaMai Mujuru”, but she was never into mining.
