What is Chamisa’s spokesman trying to say?

As President Emmerson Mnangagwa swore in new ministers in his 20-member cabinet this morning, Nkululeko Sibanda, spokesman for Movement for Democratic Change Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa, issued a statement saying the new cabinet was part of an elaborate hoax.

He said Chamisa had promised to come up with a cabinet of no more than 15 ministers. Mnangagwa had, however, appointed 43 ministers including deputies and not 20 as he claimed.

However, if one counts deputies and ministers of state, they add up to 45 though Mnangagwa has not appointed the Provincial Affairs Minister for Harare yet.

It will be interesting to see which ministries Chamisa will create when he appoints his alternative cabinet this weekend.

Chamisa has said he is not appointing a shadow cabinet but an alternative cabinet, maintaining that he is the popularly elected president while Mnangagwa is the declared President.

Sibanda also seemed to be alluding to this in his statement when he concluded: “Owing it to the 2.6 million voters who delivered an electoral and numbers-based victory, Zimbabwe can expect that the people’s President adv. Chamisa is prepared to drive this economy forward.

“The MDC and its Alliance partners has the right skills and the right team to resuscitate this economy.”

Full statement

Cabinet: part of an elaborate hoax

The Cabinet being sworn-in today suffers a lot of previous co-morbidities and dirty baggage. An illegitimate President cannot put two fresh apples in a rotten basket and hope to produce a clean basket.

One wonders if ‘new-dispensation’ means that you can cook in a dirty pot and hope that using two cups of clean water will produce clean food.

The appointment of a couple of notable names is just but a cheap attempt to give gravitas to a weak president.

Mnangagwa’s inauguration ignited a catastrophic economic decline, like no other just after an election.

A government is as strong as its leader and as economically capable as it is legitimate. Name bombing, by throwing into the basket Professor Mthuli Ncube and Kirsty Coventry is an unsophisticated way of pampering a largely incompetent cabinet.

As Zimbabwe will already know Mnangagwa has no respect for the constitution and the law but it is not anyone’s expectation that he would continue to subvert the law.

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