Dear Valuable member.
As we progress towards the provincial elections, planned for 2nd April 2011, and having travelled the length and breath of the UK and Ireland during my campaign trail I wish to assure the MDC membership that I have heard what you are saying, I have captured your wishes and hopes for the future of this province and I wish to reach out to the wider MDC UK and Ireland membership about the absolute need to choose the best contender in this race. There are currently four candidates whose credentials we are all familiar with. It is vital that voters choose a candidate who has the ability to respond to both neutral and controversial items. People have talked, e-mails have been sent, text messages have been exchanged, images of cows have been sent, and misleading polls, accusations and counter accusations have been published in the public domain. I wish to remind our valuable voters that our Province needs tough, courageous, realistic, honest and humble leadership. Our province requires leadership which is firm and assertive and one which embraces the spirit to togetherness, inclusiveness, and team building. These important attributes have not been evident in past administrations and hence our province has been sitting at the rim of leadership crisis and we have risked loosing political relevance. I wish to reaffirm my promise to you is that I, with your support and will seek to rejuvenate the legal, moral, political and socio-economic standing of the UK & Ireland external assembly. On my watch, the leadership will respond to the needs of wider membership while at the same time promoting and protecting the core values and principles of the the MDC T party. Let me assure you that new team you elect under my leadership will maintain an uncompromising attitude towards corruption, nepotism, favoritism and wrongdoing which is as a result of carelessness and arrogance. A robust training and awareness exercise will be introduced for all office-bearers to equip them with the knowledge and understanding of the MDC constitution so that our members are fully informed of their rights and also their constitutional obligations. With regards to the constitutional amendment, as leadership we will make sure that our wider membership are active participants in this process and will ensure that these submissions are deliberated upon and incoporated in the constitution which will be amended at our National Congress now pencilled to start on the 29th of April and ending on the 1st of May 2011. It is crucial that as a province with huge capacity to influence the shape and form of our struggle for the total emanciupation of Zimbabawe we seek amendments to existing powers provided within the current constitution with view to ensuring that our rights as active members in the Diaspora are guaranteed.
We also acknowledge that the UK remains a province, a part of the MDC whose leadership is in Zimbabwe. I will lead a Province that as a team will be aware of your aspirations: both the expectations that are unique to the UK Diaspora and those that are familiar with every Zimbabwean wherever we may be. I am aware that we have collective aspirations and I am also aware of the specific aspirations as the UK. As a leader I will be the beast of burden that will carry your will forward. But I am aware that we have a leadership ahead of us and inasmuch as my team will be the advocates for the Province, I will not try to usurp the roles of the leadership you elected to National positions. Our Party is a party with order and I will be an advocate of orderly transition into offices. The fight will not be one of MaDhewa versus Gushungo or anyone. This is a principled fight, it is all of us as the MDC under the leadership of Morgan Tsvangirai against a system put in place by Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF. I respect you and I know your capabilities, I and my team will listen to you, we will not claim to know everything. We don’t have a lot of degrees; I personally am a professional social worker who holds that one degree and my teaching diploma. What I bring to you is not my personal knowledge but my respect for you which is total.
I know and value your collective abilities to contribute meaningfully to the Province and it is this that underpins our collective strengths. The Movement for Democratic Change was formed with the promise of doing things differently it is a collective effort and collective approach that encourages a bottom to top approach. I am not power hungry, I am humble and I am not a veteran of anything. Our country has been let down by revolutionary authorship and ownership. We have been let down by people who have claimed to know everything because of their part in history.
I respect those who were there at the formation of the party and thank them from the bottom of my heart. But that alone cannot be the reason why the electorate should keep on voting them. ZANU PF will fear and respect all of us as a Province not because of the presence in the Province of one individual as what some of my colleagues want you to believe. Such a claim disrespects your contribution by promoting self aggrandisement. My belief is togetherness that we work hard to restore the MDC in the UK and Ireland. Let’s make it a vibrant Province and ZANU PF or any other opposition party will respect us together. The fight for Zimbabwe to me remains a collective effort.
As a province we are also faced with uncertainties regarding the future of our membership in the UK. To this there is urgent need to seek to be involved in the processes leading to how the Home Office comes up with the so called Country Guidance, and ensure that as Zimbabweans fleeing from a brutal regime, we shall not continue to be recipients of discriminatory and oppressive home office decisions and court rulings. Under the MDC constitution/ external assembly; 5.8.16 (a) as a provincial chairperson, I am empowered to formulate programmes designed to benefit our province. To that effect, I intend to employ a legal expert on immigration and asylum law who will without bias educate our members of the true legal positions of court decisions and their implications. Finally ladies and gentllemen under my leadership bureaucracy will be eradicated and I will ensure that elected leadership will readily accept opinions of ordinary MDC members and forward their concerns to MDC leadership via clearly established channels. I strongly believe that no one individual is capable of effecting positive change in our province, and ultimately in our beloved country, and hence my strong belief in partnership, and team working. In our struggle for peace, equality of opportunities, and justice in Zimbabwe, and the UK and Irealand External Assembly my biggest partner will be the ordinary MDC card carrying member. I wish to reiterate that I am ready to lead, confident to accept the challenges, tough to deal with outstanding issues and I am informed about socio-economic and political issues which affect our members. May I take this opportunity to appeal to the membership to go to the polls in large numbers and VOTE FOR THE CHANGE YOU WANT. Vote! Emily Madamombe FOR A NEW PROVINCE AND A NEW BEGGINNING TOGETHER AND WINNING
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