Former Citizens Coalition for Change leader Nelson Chamisa says it is not easy to lead or run a political party under a dictatorship especially without a budget and in an environment of extreme poverty.
He said this on X where he added: “It’s even worse when this is all in a context (of) massive unemployment where some occupy public office opportunistically mistaking citizens’ representation and deployment for employment. It’s a difficult environment. What an impossible task!! But then to serve is to sacrifice. Change must happen. The job will get done!”
Chamisa resigned from the CCC in January after leading the opposition from February 2018 when he usurped leadership of the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance within hours of Morgan Tsvangirai’s death. Tsvangirai led the opposition from its inception in 1999, though Gibson Sibanda was president in the first year, and the party split in 2005 and in 2014.
While Chamisa’s statement was targeted at President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his administration which has clamped down on the opposition and civil society especially in the run-up to the coming Southern African Development Community summit, an Ayanda Moyo, said Chamisa was talking about himself.
“It is clear, as you may have realized, that this is the reason for the MDC and CCC’s failures. The stark truth is that as a leader, you are well aware of your authoritarian inclinations,” she said in response to his X post..
A Jaguar Tazz said the problem with Chamisa was that he had abandoned everything that he had been taught by Tsvangirai.
“The problem is that you have thrown away everything you learnt from your mentor Tsvangirai. He understood the price of freedom. He understood that the needs of people take precedent above everything else. He never hid from a fight no matter how difficult it got,” he said.
Monsignor Peace concurred saying that Tsvangirai confronted the dictatorship now matter how brutal it was, unlike the current opposition which wants things on a silver platter.
“Rest in Peace Morgan Tsvangirai, the only opposition leader in Zimbabwe who was fearful, He was always checkmating dictatorship no matter how brutal it was and how risky it was. This generation of opposition leaders are cowards who think change will come on a silver platter,” he said.
Godknows Nyandoro brushed off Chamisa’s complaint about having no budget saying: “The whole chimurenga was executed without a budget and Ian Smith was not an easy dictator. You need to accept your mistakes, it can not be correct that all those who were elected at Gweru congress were wrong and deserved to be stripped their responsibilities.”
Zimbabwe’s opposition political parties are in disarray since the departure of Chamisa, who himself, was forced to resign after the CCC lost seats to relatively unknown Sengezo Tshabangu who recalled several legislators elected under the party ticket.
There are now at least three factions of the CCC, one led by Welshman Ncube, another by Jameson Timba and a third by Promise Mkwananzi.
Douglas Mwonzora, who broke ranks with Chamisa, and now leads the MDC, said ZANU-PF, through former MDC legislator Blessing Chebundo, the man who beat Mnangagwa in the 2000 parliamentary elections in Kwekwe, is on a crusade to decimate the opposition through enticing weak-willed, poorer, and economically desperate cadres.
“Recently, they recruited over thirty members from the CCC at one go. We say NO to the Third Term agenda,” Mwonzora said on X.
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