ZIMBABWE People First (ZimPF) interim leader, Agrippa Mutambara has disclosed that the party would next month hold its first elective congress to choose a substantive executive.
By NQOBANI NDLOVU
Mutambara, who was appointed interim leader following the ouster of the party’s founding president Joice Mujuru early this year, told journalists in Bulawayo on Saturday that all party structures were now geared for the congress scheduled for end of August.
“This is my first time that I am being introduced to Bulawayo as the interim president of ZimPF. For the past few weeks, I have been going around provinces being introduced, this is an on-going process,” he said.
“After our separation with Mujuru, who formed her party (National People’s Party), we continued for sometime without a leader, so it was the steering committee, the highest body of our party that was leading and we did not have a leader. We then went through a process of selecting a leader which led to me being selected as the interim president; it became necessary that I had to be introduced to the structures as their new president,” Mutambara said.
“We are still working on it, but I think by the end of August we should be having a substantive leadership in place. In other words we are working towards holding our congress not later than end of August.”
He dismissed spirited attempts by ZimPF founders, Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa, to discredit him, saying the two politicians had automatically expelled themselves from the party by failing to recognise his appointment.
Mutambara maintained that the ZimPF split will not lead to the collapse of the party, arguing instead it was necessary “to cleanse the party”.
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He argued Mujuru did not have the gravitas to fight President Robert Mugabe head-on.
“The split has not really affected us, it is actually a cleaning process of people who have a different perception of how Zimbabwe should move, because of that we felt that when we parted company with Mujuru. We felt that her leadership was not strong enough to lead us to the next elections,” Mutambara said.
