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(NEWZIMBABWE) Radio legend Sibanda to run for MP

Radio legend Sibanda to run for MP
16/01/2012 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter

RADIO legend Ezra ‘Tshisa’ Sibanda has held talks with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to run for MP at the next elections. Sibanda, who moved to the United Kingdom in 2002, plans to return home to challenge the Zanu PF incumbent in his home area of Vungu in Lower Gweru.

The former Radio 2 DJ was back in Zimbabwe in December where he held talks with the MDC-T’s organising secretary Nelson Chamisa about his ambitions. He told New Zimbabwe.com he had also visited Vungu where he was mobbed by locals who pleaded with him to “come and serve them”.

“I am answering their calls,” the 41-year-old former Ezemuli presenter said from London.

Chamisa confirmed holding “extensive discussions” with Sibanda but insisted that his candidacy was up to the people of Vungu.

“Our dictum is that to add is to strengthen, to subtract is to weaken and if given the chance to add, we choose to multiply,” Chamisa said.

“Of course one has to be a member, which Sibanda is, and one has to liaise with the district in question and membership in that district which I’m sure is being done.”

Standing in Sibanda’s way could be Mark Moyo, who represented the MDC-T in the 2008 elections but narrowly lost to Zanu PF’s Josphat Madubeko.
The party must now persuade Moyo to stand down and let Sibanda run or the two men could be subjected to a bruising primary.

Chamisa said the MDC-T was currently devising a “candidate selection mechanism” to be given to party structures after which “people will then select and elect representatives”.

Describing Sibanda as a “brand”, Chamisa said there were many prominent Zimbabweans like him who were seeking to stand as candidates in the next elections which President Robert Mugabe says should be held this year.
New Zimbabwe.com understands that the former Trade Minister Nkosana Moyo intends to run for MP on an MDC-T ticket in Bulawayo.

Chamisa said: “The democracy train to a new Zimbabwe is not yet full, it can never be full. We want all progressives to get on this train. The more the merrier!

“Real change is coming. It’s written all over people’s faces, it’s located on all the lips and loaded on all the tongues. In fact Zanu PF know more than anyone that real change is coming, that they are not ready for it is another thing.”

Labels: MDC, RADIO

posted by MrK @ 7:20 PM