Zimbabwe's MDC Faces a Leadership Contest, But Can It Be Peaceful?

analysis

The Movement for Democratic Change-Alliance, Zimbabwe's largest opposition party, has announced that it will hold its elective congress in May 2019. The announcement has stirred interest - inside and outside the party. This is because there could be an intriguing contest for the presidency of the party between the incumbent Nelson Chamisa and the secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora. The two have a history of rivalry.

Mwonzora is Chamisa's political nemesis. In 2014 Mwonzora unexpectedly won a contest for the position of secretary-general even though Chamisa, as organising secretary, was in a position to influence party structures in his favour and had been nominated by 11 out of 12 provinces. One theory is that the MDC's former leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who died of cancer in February 2018, engineered Mwonzora's victory by influencing the voting patterns of congress delegates. The reason given for this is that he wanted to curtail Chamisa's political ambitions because of his perceived role in the MDC's surprising poor showing in the 2013 national elections.

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