Expelled ZAPU senior party members have castigated party president, Sibangilizwe Nkomo, accusing him of exhibiting dictatorial tendencies.
The sacked party members are Strike Mkandla (Secretary-General), Matthew Sibanda (Matabeleland South Provincial Chairperson), Ernest Ndlovu (provincial secretary), Mildred Mkandla (Secretary for Education and Training), and Akim Nkala (National Executive Council member).
They were expelled from ZAPU on Saturday on the grounds that they had “individually and collectively chosen a path designed to harm ZAPU in collaboration with those invested in this objective for many years now.”
Speaking in an interview with CITE, Mkandla said that Nkomo specifically targeted them for highlighting that he was not qualified to be party president based on a resolution passed by the National People’s Council (NPC). Said: Mkandla:
Nkomo is on and on about his powers. That’s very arbitrary and uncalled for. We don’t know anyone who did that, not even Joshua Nkomo or Dumiso Dabengwa had the powers that he is talking about. Even if they are there, they are constitutional, not personal powers.
We have structures in which we exercise those powers and that is through NEC or NPC. Nkomo must wait for congress to get new mandates to change anything but he’s on and on about powers vested in him, to the extent that he can take arbitrary personal decisions.
Decisions are constitutional to make sure there is an absence of arbitrariness, not to heap any powers on anybody whether SG, president, or national chairperson.
These are very fictitious powers, otherwise, the last person to do such things was Mugabe and maybe to some degree Tsvangirai. In ZAPU we never had such arbitrariness.
We always had meetings and Dabengwa spoke to other people. He even presided over meetings of 16 political parties, which were not made public.
What was important about Dabengwa is he actually was a very collective man in his approach.