By Bernard Mutambudzi 

Former Deputy Prime Minister during the inclusive Government, Professor Arthur Mutambara has blasted MDC Alliance as a weak party.

Addressing delegates at a conference dubbed, ‘First Year of the Second Republic,’ organised by Sivio Instiute, Prof Mutambuara said, “My colleagues in MDC Alliance must realize that they are weak, Morgan and I we were powerful because we controlled Parliament, and Morgan had won the first round of elections, Sadc and AU had also rejected Mugabe's run-off.”

Mutambara added that he never supported sanctions against the country, saying he was not like Strive Masiiwa who discovered that sanctions are bad yesterday. He said we must remove sanctions that we put on ourselves.

Mutambara said there are two types of sanctions. The ones other people put on you and the ones you put on yourself.

“When we come out as Africa, the Chinese and Americans can talk to us not out of love but out of economics, we cannot have Botswana negotiating with China, Zimbabwe negotiating with China, we can’t operate as little nations and survive,” said Mutambara

Last week, Dr Stergomena Tax, an Executive Secretary of the Southern Africa Community reiterated SADC’s call to the international community to lift economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, which deny Zimbabwe access to finance from Multilateral and  Private Institutions, and affect the country's development

“The conference sought to contribute towards Zimbabwe’s inclusive socio-economic transformation by measuring government’s performance against its execution of policy reforms,” SIVIO said in a statement.

It also seeks to provide an opportunity for stakeholders to map opportunities for reform in 2019 in order to craft a policy agenda that will facilitate the revamping of the economy with a particular focus on agriculture, small-and-medium enterprises, and tourism as well as addressing broader governance challenges,” the organisation said.

Several experts drawn from government, civil society, business and academia attended the conference. They included Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president, Sifelani Jabangwe, United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning director, Adebayo Olukoshi, Women Affairs Ministry Secretary Rudo Chitiga and Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe director Godfrey Kanyenze among others.