By James Gwati- Prominent Harare lawyer Lewis Uriri had CCC activist Sengezo Tshabangu free legal services when the party approached the courts to challenge his authority to recall its Members of Parliament and Councillors.

Uriri was President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s lawyer at the Constitutional Court (ConCourt) against a petition filed by then MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa, who was seeking to overturn the ZANU PF leader’s victory in the 30 July 2018 election.

Speaking during the Asakhe Online program, The Breakfast Club recently, Tshabangu, who claims to be CCC’s interim secretary-general, said Uriri understood his financial predicament and agreed to offer his initial legal services free of charge.

Tshabangu said once Uriri got “the ball rolling”, some members of the business community then started to pour cash towards his legal costs. CITE quoted Tshabangu as saying:

It is difficult for us to meet our litigation costs. Our legal team is headed by Advocate Uriri, one of the best lawyers to ever come out of Zimbabwe. He is very expensive.

We sat down with him and he said he understood where I was coming from. He said he would get the ball rolling so that the people in general would know what was going on and understand my cause. He did the first appearance free of charge.

After that, we started having people coming in to help us meet our legal costs. Some are from the business communities, people with huge amounts of money.

They understood our cause and they gave us money to channel to our legal needs. We are accounting for each cent of that money.

Tshabangu was initially a member of the MDC and was part of the group that split from the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai in 2014 to form the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which was led by Tendai Biti, with Kucaca Phulu as the deputy.

Later, he rejoined the mainstream MDC Alliance when the alliance was formed ahead of the 2018 harmonised elections.

Tshabangu attended meetings where the MDC Alliance rebranded itself as CCC.

In October 2023, Tshabangu recalled 15 parliamentarians and 17 councillors, including the mayor of Masvingo, and the chairperson of the Epworth Local Board citing that they were no longer party members.

Subsequently, he recalled more CCC MPs and Councillors countrywide on the pretext they had ceased being members of the party.