Ncube speaks on life after defeat

Politics
FORMER Industry minister Welshman Ncube says he took time to reflect after his party’s disastrous performance in last year’s July 31 elections by turning to farming and reading.

FORMER Industry minister Welshman Ncube says he took time to reflect after his party’s disastrous performance in last year’s July 31 elections by turning to farming and reading. NDUDUZO TSHUMA STAFF REPORTER

Ncube told Southern Eye he was aware that his disappearance from the limelight had spawned many conspiracy theories. Some journalists claimed he had become “ a hermit with white head, white beard and often eats wild fruits and roots”.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “We spent our time in reflection, talking to people at the community level. I live 90% of my life either at my rural home or at the farm and there are real people who went to vote at the villages.

“I talk to them informally. We talk to them formally as party leadership when we travel from place to place and trying to understand what went wrong, why they did vote the way they voted, some of them actually say we are sorry we voted the way we did.

“Some say we voted the (MDC-T) people because we believed that was the only way of removing Mugabe and we didn’t believe you guys would remove Mugabe, we were told these are the guys who could remove Mugabe, he had to go first.”

Ncube said there were some who believed that Zanu PF was still the best thing for the country because it stopped whites from running their lives like they did in Rhodesia.

“I have always been, contrary to what some in the media say, many of you would know that prior to July 31 last year I had been a farmer for more than a decade, one of my first passions had been ranching and I have been doing that for a very long time,” he said.

“During some of those moments of reflection I spent a lot of time fulfilling that passion of spending more time looking after cattle and doing some farm activities and I can assure you I have enjoyed it and sometimes it has provided me with moments of quite reflection.”

The MDC leader said he also found time to read all the books and the literature that he had wanted to read in the last 10 years.

Ncube said besides farming, “by training I have always been an intellectual who wanted to apply the legal and other skills that one spent a lot training for.

“The better part of my life has been therefore a professional teaching and practicing law and clearly one day when time permits, I will go back to my first love either parttime or fulltime it doesn’t matter, but my first love has always been what I was trained for, legal practice in one form or another.

“I have almost intellectually rested for almost a year after more than a decade of continuous nonstop work of one form or another in politics or the government in whatever space we were in but for now, I am content to follow my passion around farming and if and when I say maybe I will go back to some more intellectual work as long as it allows me to continue to play my role as the president of the MDC, I will do that, but that time is not today.”