MDC MPs walked out of Parliament as President Emmerson Mnangagwa began his state of the nation address, a sign of the political tensions still gripping the country.
The MDC says it does not recognise Mnangagwa, accusing him of rigging last year’s elections.
The MPs were sitted inside parliament and remained on their seats as Mnangagwa walked in, while Zanu PF MPs stood up as a sign of respect. When the president began speaking, the opposition MPs walked out.
MDC spokesman Daniel Molokele said staying on and listening to Mnangagwa would have been an “endorsement of rigging”.
Mnangagwa spoke to his party’s partisans as Zimbabwe reels from its worst economic crisis in more than a decade.
Hope greeted Mnangagwa’s rise to power when the late Robert Mugabe was toppled in a military coup in 2017, but now Zimbabweans are enduring shortages of everything including medicines, bread, petrol, cash and even water.
The economic collapse has led to weariness and anger that often flare into street protests and government crackdowns.
Thabitha Khumalo, the MDC chairperson and MP, told reporters outside parliament that the solution to the developing crisis lay in Mnangagwa sitting down with his opposition rival Nelson Chamisa.
“Our people have no money, no food, and hospitals are not working and they (government) are busy wasting people’s time talking about nothing on nothing. The time has come to understand that as a country, we can fight as much as we can, but we need dialogue,” Khumalo said.
“When we talk of dialogue, we are not talking of a dialogue where it’s a church choir… we want independent convenors that are going to conduct this dialogue where we map the way forward for this country.”
Addressing the Zanu PF MPs, Mnangagwa claimed a political dialogue platform known as POLAD under which he has been regularly interacting with leaders of smaller parties was “making progress”.
He added: “I stand ready to welcome all political parties who contested the 2018 harmonised elections which are not part of this forum.”
The MDC has said it does not want to share power but will support a transitional government that will implement key economic and electoral reforms to avoid a disputed election in 2023.
Zanu PF has so far rejected calls for an outsider media with a UN mandate, insisting that Mnangagwa won fairly and must be left to govern.
Mnangagwa arrived at Parliament in a Rolls-Royce escorted by police officers on horseback, a ceremonial procession inherited from the colonial and white minority government after independence.
The president observed a minute of silence for Mugabe, who was buried over the weekend .
“As we remember him (Mugabe), let us stand emboldened by the fact that we cannot change the past but the future is in our hands,” Mnangagwa said as the opposition MPs walked out.
However, many say Mnangagwa has inherited more than ceremonial procedures from Mugabe, pointing to alleged acts of repression such as abductions, arrests and torture of government critics as well as economic mismanagement.
Mnangagwa called for dialogue with opposition political parties and an end to the “culture of fear and violence” at a time that his government is accused of being more repressive than Mugabe.
The president also pleaded for more time to resolve the biting economic problems, saying that “getting the economy working again will require time, patience, unity of purpose and perseverance.”
The opposition said Mnangagwa, a former Mugabe enforcer turned foe, has done little to move the country forward.
(Additional reporting Associated Press)
