THE two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) factions closed ranks on Tuesday night to condemn President Robert Mugabe’s refusal to grant national hero status to the party’s founding leader Gibson Sibanda, who died on Monday night.

Mugabe took just hours to consider a written request for hero status on Tuesday before writing back to Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara – leader of a faction of the MDC – saying the former trade union leader would be accorded a “state assisted funeral”.

A state-assisted funeral means he will be buried wherever the family chooses with financial and material help from the state – which is different from ‘national hero’ status which comes with a burial at the National Heroes’ Acre shrine in Harare.

The decision made with no known consultation came as a surprise because Mugabe agreed in a meeting with his ruling coalition partners Mutambara and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on August 4 to appoint a cross-party committee to confer hero status – replacing the Zanu PF politburo.

That committee is yet to be formed, and it had been expected Mugabe would at least have talks with Tsvangirai and Mutambara before the decision was announced.

Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the Tsvangirai-led MDC said Mugabe’s Zanu PF party was “showing its true colours”.

“Cruelty is their oxygen, revenge their fuel and contempt their daily bread,” Chamisa said. “Any meaning of hero -- either a dictionary meaning or a political interpretation – would fit Sibanda. There is no debate at all.”

Priscilla Misihairabwi, the deputy secretary general of the Mutambara-led MDC said: “This may be a good time for Zanu PF to come out and tell the country that the tax payer has been funding what is essentially a misnamed Zanu PF honorary club and burial society.”