MDC starts restructuring exercise in South Africa

By Tichaona Sibanda
04 April 2006

The Morgan Tsvangirai led MDC in South Africa, now known as a province following constitutional changes during the party’s national people’s congress in Harare recently, has begun a restructuring exercise that will be capped off by a congress in early May.

Jacqueline Zwambila, a national council member who supervised elections of an interim committee that will oversee the restructuring exercise said the task will take at least four weeks to complete.

The province has nine districts scattered all over South Africa and its members have largely remained united since the split in the top leadership last year.

About three million Zimbabweans have resettled in South Africa and of those, almost 100 000 are MDC activists. National chairman Isaac Matongo is expected to visit South Africa to attend the province’s national congress.

‘We have basically remained united in South Africa and I can safely say there is only one MDC in this country,” said Zwambila, who added that the interim committee will step down just before congress to pave way for a substantive executive to be elected.

Since the acrimonious split of the top six last year, the party’s diaspora structures have also been rocked by infighting that also led to splits. In the UK, now also known as a province, the restructuring exercise of all its districts is nearly complete, and so are districts for the province of the United States.