Zimbabwe First Party (ZimFirst) leader, Dr Maxwell Shumba has sensationally claimed former that President Robert Mugabe is welcome to join forces with the opposition movement in the country as he will help in revealing how his administration manipulated previous elections.
Shumba made the remarks on Sunday soon after his arrival into the country from his base in the United States.
He called on Mugabe to brave up and join the opposition forces, a move Shumba said will help the country know how previous polls were manipulated in favour of Zanu PF.
“We are saying Mr Mugabe is free to join and participate in opposition politics, hopefully, he will tell us how he was rigging and help to unearth other misdemeanours.
“But the question is who will vote for him? We have youngsters who grew up seeing the same old faces which have affected them. I have seen a lot of young men and women who have great potential but have resorted to selling oranges while being supported by their parents and it’s all because of Mugabe’s doing. So I’m not sure if he can survive a day in the opposition front,” said Shumba.
Mugabe resigned in November last year after the ‘military intervention’ in the Zanu-PF factional fights under an operation code-named Operation Restore Legacy.
The operation ushered in Former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa who was leading the Lacoste faction in Zanu PF.
Mnangagwa has since promised a new era which Shumba said was nothing different from the Mugabe era.
“I don’t want to call this a new government… before November 24 we had Zanu-PF 1.0 this Mnangagwa government is just a 2.0 of the same government so there is nothing new.
“This Zanu-PF 2.0 is also admitting that it has failed as evidence by Mnangagwa’s planned trip to the United Kingdom where he will extend his begging bowl. So both Mugabe and Mnangagwa failed this country and we want to correct that,” said Shumba.
He added that he believes his party will win the much anticipated 2018 harmonized elections and will usher in a new government that will take the country out of the economic doldrums that it is in.
“This party has people who are willing to help this country recover from the mess that it finds itself in. We need technocrats as a country, who will write policies and I can say we have them already.
“As the government in waiting, we are saying we are ready for elections and we are here to win it. We want to make Zimbabwe a better country, we want the country to be competitive on the global scale,” said Shumba.
Shumba, has in the past few days, been engulfed in a power tussle with some members of his party who wanted to wrestle power from him on allegations that he (Shumba) has not registered to vote hence cannot be leading the party.
However, Shumba had no kind words for the ‘rogue elements’ as he claimed they were Zanu-PF surrogates planted to destabilize the ZimFirst and he was the constitutionally elected president of the Party.
“Anyone who has concern about leadership in the party and have made allegations, were invited to my campaign and unfortunately they failed to impress, so we fired them. These are same people who want to take over the party, we do not associate ourselves with them.
“They allege that I have not registered, yes I hadn’t but I’m here to do that and soon we will start our outreach programs,” he said.
Shumba has since pulled out of Coalition of Democrats (CODE), an amalgamation of opposition parties, citing incompetence from its leader, Elton Mangoma and appears no-longer interested in coalition settlements.
