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MDC-T vice president Thokozani Khupe is an embattled woman. She is finally tasting the bitter medicine that her erstwhile comrades before her — former secretary general of a united MDC Professor Welshman Ncube and lately his predecessor Tendai Biti — swallowed with fatal consequences for their tenures.

MDC-T president Morgan Tsvangirai has always viewed himself as the embodiment of his party and the near cult status he attained at the height of the country’s economic challenges between 2001 and 2008 left him convinced that the opposition party was nothing without him.

His delusions of grandeur know no bounds and woe betide anyone who dares oppose him. His latest fight with Khupe is therefore not surprising given the brutal manner he dealt with dissent in the past. There can only be one winner and to her folly, Khupe might soon find herself in the wilderness.

Beginning with his unilateral reversal of a national council decision to participate in the 2005 senatorial elections precipitating the first split where Prof Ncube and his group left to form a splinter MDC, Tsvangirai has always used whatever means necessary to hold onto power and neutralise opponents. The 2005 split was likely fuelled by strains caused by Tsvangirai’s treason trial and tribalism, an unpublished report compiled by the party revealed.

The report compiled by a three-man commission comprising Tichaona Mudzingwa, Moses Mzila Ndlovu and Giles Mutsekwa into violence that erupted at the party’s Harvest House headquarters in May of that year suggested the party was inexorably heading towards a split anyway — plagued by tribal mistrust and competing political ambitions.

The report said fears that Tsvangirai would be jailed at the end of his treason trial split the party, with one group of senior officials unprepared to have Tsvangirai’s deputy, Gibson Sibanda — a Ndebele — leading the party. A “vigilante group” of 25 MDC youths camped at the party’s headquarters was used by this group of politicians “in a deadly game” to forcibly drive out party workers seen as aligned to secretary general Prof Ncube and Sibanda — just days before Tsvangirai was acquitted.

In the latest split of the MDC-T where Biti and former deputy treasurer Elton Mangoma were assaulted by party youths at Harvest House last year — once again Tsvangirai was conspicuous by his indifference to the humiliation of his senior aides leading some to speculate that he was behind the chaotic scenes that saw Mangoma emerging bruised and bloodied after being set upon by marauding youths.

Biti and Mangoma were leading a group that was calling for leadership renewal and urging Tsvangirai to step down following his massive loss to President Robert Mugabe in the 2013 harmonised elections. We believe Khupe should have learnt from these episodes and realised that her boss was not a democrat and would resort to any form of skullduggery once his position was threatened. Her open defiance and challenge to Tsvangirai’s authority could cost her dearly because the MDC-T leader is a dictator who despises alternative views.

We reported last week that Khupe broke down and cried when confronted by rowdy demonstrators who heckled and humiliated her after she led a push to have the party participate in the forthcoming parliamentary by-elections on June 10. The party took a decision not to participate in the polls to fill 14 vacancies which arose following the expulsion of legislators who broke away to form the MDC Renewal.

In an indication of frosty relations between Khupe and her boss, Tsvangirai left his deputy to face humiliation from ordinary party members who insulted her in his presence. Since then, Khupe has fallen further from grace with the national council expelling one of her closest aides during a meeting held in Harare on Tuesday.

Her alleged proxies were also removed from leadership positions in Bulawayo province with plans afoot to humiliate her in Masvingo where the party is scheduled to hold a rally at the weekend. Tsvangirai appears to have taken a decision to strengthen the hand of Khupe’s adversary, Matson Hlalo, in Bulawayo while weakening her. He is dealing with her in the same manner he dealt with anyone who challenged him in the past.

Khupe’s position appears untenable and Tsvangirai seems to have taken a decision to sideline and possibly engineer the end of her political career. She is paying the price for over-ambition and if precedent is anything to go by, Khupe might soon be languishing in the dustbin of history.