MDC leader, Welshman Ncube, on Friday lashed out at his former boss Morgan Tsvangirai for parroting "Mugabe's mentality".
Tsvangirai recently told journalists that break-ups within the opposition were feeding into a "Zanu PF agenda".
And Ncube hit back accusing the MDC-T leader of being a "good Mugabe student".
"We are neither drama queens nor peacocks to be trying to outdo Tsvangirai or even those in Zanu PF in which there is high drama now," he said.
"That Tsvangirai accusing us of feeding into the Zanu PF agenda, is the kind of discourse that should make us not just sad but angry, it is this sort of thinking that has brought us into the mess that we in are in today."
He added: "When you disagree with Mugabe on principle, when you tell him that he has run down the country, that the people of this country are this poor and that Zimbabwe has become the laughing stock of the world, his perennial answer is that 'you are agents of imperialism'.
"It does not matter who you are, even now within their own party some are being accused of being sponsored by the Americans, no one can hold a different opinion and yet the liberation struggle was fundamentally about the right to hold a different opinion."
Ncube said he and other "democratic leaders" differ with Tsvangirai on matters of values and principles.
"This is where we have a point of departure from Morgan that he has learnt and learnt very well from Mugabe. We disagree with him on principle; we disagree on values he regresses to the Zanu PF mantra. 'You are Zanu PF people; you are feeding into the Zanu PF agenda.
"For Christ's sake, answer why the party has split twice under your stewardship and answer why you beat up your own colleagues? Answer all the things which have led to the splits of the MDC.
"That is where the crux of the matter is, and that is why some of us feel sad, feel angry about some of those allegations because they negate our fundamental freedom to disagree with someone which is fundamentally at variance with why we came together in 1999," he said.
Ncube, the MDC's founding secretary general, broke ranks with Tsvangirai in October 2005 following sharp disagreements over participation in senatorial elections. He has participated in elections ever since and fared badly.
Battered and bruised, the constitutional law expert is now seeking synergies with another former Tsvangirai lieutenant Tendai Biti.
Biti is part of the leadership of another faction of the MDC currently fronted by Sekai Holland, which split from Tsvangirai earlier this year following the party's dismal showing at the polls last July.
Holland said she has no "business watching what Tsvangirai is doing".
"We do not care what the MDC-T or Tsvangirai is doing. Nobody even remembered that their congress is starting today," she said.