“I worked with Margaret Dongo even though I was not in politics,” Misihairabwi-Mushonga said. “I saw a woman who was being abused by a system and that is why I entered into politics. I went to her and said can I help.
“Thoko for me was a combination of a lot of things. We had come from the same space. She was my friend. I had my values and I just felt she was being victimized not just because of where she was coming from but also because she was a woman and ma issue e ethnicity. I could not sit down and say I could be somewhere else where this woman was not.”
Misihairabwi-Mushonga is fluent in two of the country’s leading vernacular languages-Shona and Ndebele. Her father is Shona and her mother is Ndebele. She is a niece of Zimbabwe’s first President Canaan Banana, who was ceremonial President from independence to 1987 when the country changed to have an executive President.
Mugabe, who had been Prime Minister and Head of government, became executive President and was to remain so until November 2017 when he was forced to resign following military intervention to save the country from “criminal elements” that had hijacked his government.
“I offered to be her manager to assist her in her election as president,” Misihairabwi-Mushonga said about her decision to back Khupe. “I filed her papers in Harare. Then she said to me it does not make sense for me to be her campaign manager and not be seen to be contesting the elections.
“It’s almost as if you are sending a message that you don’t believe ndine capacity to win,” she says Khupe told her. “I drove to Bulawayo to sign papers to be on the list.”
To her surprise everyone lost, including Khupe, except her and Dube.
“I had a lot of trauma about being the only person from my party in the House of Assembly. The last thing I wanted was to be this one person,” she said.
“The leadership from Khupe would sit down and talk to me and say just go back even if that is just for a few years that would be okay. They said: ‘We need somebody that has been there, if we are only going to have one person in that Parliament let us have someone at least who will represent 20 of us because you know what is there.’”
Asked if her decision to join Khupe was a matter of principle, why had she switched from one party to another and was now representing a third opposition political party in her 20-year career, Misihairabwi-Mushonga said: “It has never really been about a switch. If anything I have always consistently stayed with what in my humble opinion has been the core of the MDC. When the first split happened, the issues were around constitutionalism, collective leadership, the issue of violence and issue of ethnicity.
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