By Wilbert Mukori- “We Won’t Allow You to Personalise the Citizens Movement: Welshman Ncube Warns Chamisa!” read the headline.

Not again! was my knee jerk reaction.

“Now the riddle has been solved. We have now realised how we lost the  2018 and 2023 elections to Mnangagwa. He (Chamisa) is the problem, how  can the whole party’s symbol be someone’s face, we cannot allow that,”  Professor Welshman Ncube, one of the three CCC Vice Presidents, explained.

“We were not consulted on this matter, we were not consulted on the  selection of candidates and we were not consulted on everything. Nelson  Chamisa is doing everything by himself and the result; we lost a free and fair election to Zanu PF.”

To say I did not see this coming will be to lie. I am just surprised that the split has come so soon before the dust of this flawed election process has not even settled. 

SADC is yet to meet and decide on what to do about the defiant Zanu PF regime that has gone to form a new government although SADC and AU reports had clearly stated there could be no legitimate government out of the flawed and illegal 23 August election process.

The late Simon Muzenda, Zanu PF Vice President during Mugabe’s days, once boasted that people will vote for the baboon if Zanu PF told them to! What the buffoon did not realise was that if the elections were free, fair and credible; Zimbabwean would happily vote for the troop of baboons if only to get rid of remove Zanu PF from office. 

So the number one task for any Zimbabwe opposition party has always been to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections, to ensure the elections are free and fair. 

The MDC (now morphed into CCC) was launched in 1999 on the promise to deliver the necessary democratic changes to stop Zanu PF rigging elections. After 23 years, including 5 in the 2008 to 2013 GNU, MDC/CCC leaders have failed to implement even one token reform. Worse still, after the GNU debacle, they gave up on reforms and have been participating in flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy out of greed.

Zanu PF blatantly rigged the 23 August 2023 elections, as the regime has done in all the other elections in past, because MDC/CCC had failed to implement the democratic reforms to stop the regime rigging the elections. Ever since the launch of the party in 1999, MDC has been proven utterly useless because the party leaders were corrupt and breath-taking incompetent. 

Professor Ncube is right, ever since the launch of the CCC, Nelson Chamisa has turned out to be an autocrat and a control freak. He has resisted calls to have party structures and elected officials. He has controlled everything and made all key decisions. 

MDC and now CCC’s enduring popular support has itself become a measure of the people’s desperation for change, the people will support any opposition with a chance to remove Zanu PF from power even if it has a rotten track record. 

The lack of democratic values and quality leadership has been the root causes of the MDC/CCC’s endless infighting and more important of all the failure to implement the democratic reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging the election. 

Now that Professor Ncube has made public his displeasure with Chamisa the breakup of CCC is a given. Many of those who won seats in the recent elections will, no doubt, swear their loyalty to Chamisa out of fear of being recalled and losing the seat. 

The CCC supporters are a confused lot at the best of time; this latest round of infighting in the party will throw the cat amongst the pigeons. At a time when the nation wanted the wildebeest herd to focus on demanding a new GNU that will implement the democratic reforms. The last GNU failed to implement even one reform and got away with it because the herd had no clue what was going on.

The only beneficiary out of this CCC chaos and fallout is Zanu PF. The party will be exploring ways to price CCC wide open and how to profit from it all. 

SADC’s efforts to put an end to the curse of rigged elections was not helped by CCC leaders taking their gravy train seats on the illegal government and now a CCC party tearing itself to pieces before their eyes!  

Still, SADC must remain focused on task on hand – to a new GNU and to appoint competent staff to implement all the democratic reforms with out failure. SADC leaders must explore the chances of getting help from Commonwealth, UN, etc.; it is no shame to ask for help. 

Another GNU failure to implement reforms would be more than cause for shame for Zimbabwe and the whole SADC region – it would be a real tragedy!