Zimbabwe opposition leaders form anti-Mugabe alliancepublished at 08:58 British Summer Time 20 April 2017
Shingai Nyoka
BBC Africa, Harare
Two leading opposition figures in Zimbabwe have formed an alliance to contest next year's general election against long-serving ruler Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.
The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, signed the agreement with the sacked Zimbabwean Vice-President, Joice Mujuru, of the National People's Party (NPP).
Image source, AFPMr Tsvangirai (C) and Ms Mujuru (R) have not yet announced who will be the presidential candidate
Mr Tsvangirai said the deal was a building block towards establishing a broad alliance to confront Mr Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party, which has been in power since independence in 1980.
Ms Mujuru said the MDC and the NPP had worked on the agreement for the last six months and would now start negotiating specific details to strengthen their alliance.
It's unclear which of the two will lead the coalition, and this could turn out to be a thorny issue, though most of the other opposition parties have endorsed Mr Tsvangirai as their presidential candidate.
For his part, Mr Mugabe, 93, has said he was not losing any sleep over the proposed coalition.
Zanu-PF has once again nominated Mr Mugabe, the world's oldest ruler, as its presidential candidate in the poll.