Categories: Stories

Payback time for Mliswa!

 

Norton Legislator Temba Mliswa is increasingly showing that he won his seat as an independent with the help of a faction of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front members and it is now payback time.

This is the only plausible explanation for his sentiments that: “You cannot win an election without a component of ZANU-PF.”

According to The Herald Mliswa said. “ZANU-PF is the ruling party and for the coalition to think, even if they gather, no matter how big it might be, their numbers are not big enough to beat ZANU-PF and that is the truth of the matter.”

Mliswa’s comments come days before a crucial by-election in Bikita West this weekend.

Mliswa beat ZANU-PF candidate Ronald Chindedza in October last year by more than 2 000 when he polled 8 927 votes against Chindedza’s 6 129 in the Norton by-election.

His victory was attributed to factionalism in ZANU-PF with reports that Chindedza had allegedly been imposed by the G40 faction while other reports said he had the support of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Other reports, however, said Mliswa won because he had support from the Christopher Mutsvangwa faction of the war veterans association which wanted to show President Robert Mugabe how powerful it still was since the seat had been left vacant by Mutsvangwa after he was expelled from the party.

Whispers say the war veterans also had the support of the Lacoste faction which also wanted to demonstrate that G40 had no supporters.

(269 VIEWS)

This post was last modified on January 18, 2017 9:56 am

Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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