Tsvangirai Receives Major Boost With CSO's Engagement

National  |     |  

Harare, February 11, 2015 – MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai this week
received a major boost in his bid to cajole the country’s influential
civil society community after they turned up for a key meeting where
he appealed for support to challenge President Robert Mugabe’s stay in
power.

Leaders of influential civil society organisations turned up for a
breakfast meeting convened by Tsvangirai on Tuesday in Harare where he
reached out to them and appealed for a unified challenge to President
Robert Mugabe and his ZANU PF party’s rule.

In his bid to appeal to the leaders of the civil society leaders, who
have been disillusioned by Tsvangirai and his party’s state of
affairs, the opposition leader outlined the state of his party’s
affairs and how it would address the national crisis.

Informed sources who attended the meeting held in Harare’s Avondale
said Tsvangirai emphasized the need to build a “national consensus” so
as to resolve the country’s agonising political and economic crisis.
Among the key CSOs who attended the meeting were leaders of the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, a key ally of Tsvangirai who once
led the labour union as its secretary-general, the Crisis in Zimbabwe
Coalition (CZC), the Election Resource Centre and the Labour and
Economic Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ) among other
organisations.

During the two-hour long meeting, LEDRIZ made a presentation on the
“state of the economy” while the ERC share a paper on “election
preparedness in the current landscape”.

The CZC presented on “possible scenarios to 2018”.

Tsvangirai was accompanied by his party’s lieutenants among them party
secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora, Morgan Komichi, Dennis Murira and
Luke Tamborinyika, his spokesperson.

The MDC-T, once a formidable party was weakened last year after the
party split with former secretary-general Tendai Biti and former
deputy-treasurer Elton Mangoma leaving to form a new party, MDC
Renewal, which is also battling to lure some CSOs into its ranks