The Inherent Resort to Violence in Opposition Politics: A Synthesis of the Post-2005 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Formations in Zimbabwe

This paper argues that the post-2005 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formed in 1999 as an opposition party in Zimbabwe, has inherently adopted violence as a tool to unseat the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) led government. Furthermore, the use of violence has continued among its various formations in tussles for leadership positions, and to settle a plethora of other issues. The aim of the paper is to unpack the pervasiveness of intra-party and inter-party violence within the MDC and its various formations in Zimbabwe's opposition politics. The paper contends that the current leader of the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDCAlliance), Nelson Chamisa, usurped power from the late Morgan Tsvangirai's natural successor Thokozani Khupe through violence after unleashing the socalled MDC vanguard to beat up, ridicule and humiliate Khupe who they called ?hure' (prostitute) in public spaces. Similarly, when Professor Welshman Ncube, the current MDC-Alliance second vice-president, broke away from the mainstream MDC party together with the late, then MDC vice-president Gibson Sibanda in 2005 to form the MDC-N, there was party-sponsored violence against them from Tsvangirai who publicly labelled his former deputy as ?duche' (idiot) when they failed to resolve their differences peacefully. When