Arthur Mutambara said Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai deserves a place of honour in the fight for democracy but he had become a “little Mugabe”.
He said this when he was elected leader of the break-away faction of the MDC that was led by Welshman Ncube saying that Tsvangirai had become dictatorial by overturning a decision by the paety’s national executive to contest the proposed Senate elections.
Disagreement between Tsvangirai and most of the members of the executive led to the party split but the Ncube group invited Mutambara to come and lead the faction.
Mutambara, a former student leader, praised the pre-1980 Robert Mugabe but said the MDC were “better defenders of the liberation war legacy than the current ZANU-PF party”.
On land reform, he said that returning to the pre-2000 status quo was not desirable and accused the UK and other Western governments of reneging on support for redistribution but he advocated for equitable and transparent distribution of land.
He said that his principles were grounded in pan-Africanism and “put our American and European friends on notice” that he too was opposed to unilateralism and violations of sovereignty.
Mutambara led the smaller faction of the MDC until February 2011 when Welshman Ncube took over but Mutambara remained Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of National Unit until the elections of 2013 which saw the smaller faction losing the 10 seats that it won in 2008.
Below are the first 300 of726 Wikileaks cables on Tsvangirai.
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