Hello Mother Khupe.
I am Devine Mafa, the son of Honourable Felix Mafa. I am behind you in this issue of returning to constitutionalism of The MDC PARTY because I, myself, have been advocating for constitutionalism in our movement for sometime and it seemed noone heard me.
I would like to urge you to look into the issue of imposition of candidates and the use of the militia to cow people by candidates who were imposed to represent MDC in parliament. These you must recall from parliament since they did not follow the due processes of primary elections. They were imposed on the people and some with their deep pockets. The grassroots were deprived of their constitutional right to choose leaders of their choice.
I applaud you for the staunch position that you took when you recalled Charlton Hwende and others from parliament. As for Hwende, he was never elected by the grassroots. He was imposed, and when the people wanted to resist him, they were met with violence like that which visited you at Save’s funeral. The imposition of candidates and the use of violence on percieved enemies defies democracy. It is because of such situations that people were now labelling us as vanhu veMDC, separating themselves from us because they had realised we had lost the plot on democracy.
It is your stance to constitutionalism as the founding mother of the movement that I admire most. You have stood your ground against the bullying by these not so learned lawyers. You fought like a lioness and now sanity is starting to prevail in our movement.
It is also my humble request that you shouldn’t let the party get hijacked again by the academia, lawyers and those with money at the expense of those from the grassroots.
From the beginning, Chamisa was not for the constitution. He used his militia, the vanguard, to disposes you and those who were like minded from the movement. Such a character who could not respect the constitution could not be left in charge of the people’s movement. He violated the constitution left , right and centre. Anyone who opposed him like you did was villified. Look at Mwonzora, Komichi and Mudzuri how they were also vilified and attacked. They were given names and abused. I commend you for taking the bold decision to fire Chamisa. He indeed has not added value to our democracy. Zimbabwe needs democrats and constitutionalists like you.
It is also my belief that you have a hard job ahead of you in the fight for restoring the founding democratic tendencies of our movement. You, as an elected office bearer of the party, should recall those that were imposed on the people. If you do exactly like that you will have my support in total. I totally understand that my father was responsible for calling Bulawayo for Chamisa and not for you, but he has never ceased to stand by the constitution.
I empathise with you for the abuse you suffered for democracy and protection of the constitution. I, therefore, urge you to remain attached to the grassroots who gave you the mandate to lead in 2014. You must make sure we have one MDC. I have decided to file a lawsuit to challenge use of the party name in any other form by anyone including Chamisa’s Alliance. In this regard, I am waiting for your decision and go ahead. It is my belief that we should have one MDC that was founded in 1999. By filing this lawsuit, I would have done my part to add to democracy and help to protect the poor and weak.
This is all possible. We have the chance to restart again and make our movement a real democracy that shuns corruption and imposition of candidates. It is true that failure to hold primary elections that causes confusion and fights by the people. This causes the party to have no peace. This has been the root of all the problems for political parties in Zimbabwe. Since there is no law gorverning political parties and how they are financed, we have seen gorvernment and politicians with money abusing our democracy. It is now your chance to stand up and shine mama Khupe and restore the democratic tenets of our movement that has gone to the dogs.
I know very well that we haven’t met . I would like to say that i support you in your endeavour to return constitutionalism to our party.
I salute you and promise to support you in your fight against those aimed at usurping the democracy we had been and are still fighting for.
Yours Truly
Devine Divine Mafa