“I am not a political shark” says Zimbabwe legislator who has represented three different opposition parties in 20 years

“We went our separate ways at the split of 2006. It made sense. Thokozani comes from the trade unions. I come from civic society. I was more comfortable with people like Welshman Ncube, the more intellectual side of MDC.

“Thoko was purely trade union. Her loyalty lay with where she was comfortable with. I was coming from civil society, human rights. We had a mediator between me and Khupe just before the split, and spent the whole night trying to find ways forward because we were close friends.”

She said her decision to back Khupe in the 2018 elections was, therefore, not at the spur of a moment.

“It’s not as if I wake up in 2018 and, ha-la-la, I start saying let me find Thokozani Khupe. She buried my mother, you know. That’s how close we were,” Misihairabwi-Mushonga said.

“I also had to make a political choice – Thokozani Khupe on one side, Welshman Ncube on the other.  I just went back to my compass.

“My compass was anti-violence, anti-ethnicity, constitutionalism and collective leadership. I am a feminist and here was a woman. It wasn’t a tough decision to make.”

Indeed, it was not a tough decision. She had done the same thing 23 year before. At the time she was not even in politics but was a human rights activist. But when she learnt that Margaret Dongo, a female ex-combatant from the ruling ZANU-PF was being barred from contesting a Parliamentary seat that she had held for five years because the party wanted another candidate, also a female, she decided to join Dongo’s campaign.

Dongo was only 15 when she joined the liberation struggle in 1975. At independence she joined then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s office and in 1990, she was sponsored by war veterans to contest the Harare East seat and won. But she became too vocal for the liking of the party leadership so in 1995, they side-lined her and selected Vivian Mwashita, another ex-combatant, to contest her seat.

Dongo refused to step down and contested the seat as an independent candidate. She lost by 1 000 but took the case to court accusing the ruling party of rigging the result. The court agreed there were anomalies in the election and ordered a rerun. She beat Mwashita in the rerun.

When the MDC was formed in 1999, Dongo refused to join the party because she did not get on well with Tsvangirai, but she lost her seat in 2000. It was won by the MDC candidate Gabriel Chaibva who polled 12 430 votes. She won only 951 votes and was even beaten by Mwashita who polled 4 730 votes.

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