Nelson Chamisa’s worst nightmare

Tshabangu is the ultimate test of Chamisa’s leadership. He has challenged him as no other person has ever done. Concerns have been raised over Chamisa’s centralisation of power, where the party is run by a selected few, handpicked by him.

With all that is happening, CCC should pause for a moment to introspect.

Many in the party played along during the election period because it was politically correct to do so. However, this was detrimental to the party, as has been shown by the Tshabangu debacle.

We have heard many people saying the opposition party legislators and councillors should resign en masse. This is too simplistic and a sign of failure to grasp and understand the real politics in the country.

If Chamisa calls for mass withdrawals from Parliament and local authorities, he will be digging his own political grave. He will be playing into the hands of his enemies.

The current political set up in our flawed democracy is binarised and hung on bipartisanship and if one party retreats, the other will move to take all the spoils.

If the remaining CCC MPs resign en masse, Zimbabwe will become a de facto one-party State until by-elections are held. A lot of amendments and laws can be enacted in the absence of opposition party members and the avenues to oppose will be limited and it disadvantages the voters.

Tshabangu is not acting alone. He has handlers in the top echelons of the opposition political party. Take for example his continuous insistence that the party must go back to Gweru elected structures and resolutions, which were made during the MDC-A days.

He did not get any senior position during the Gweru congress. I believe it is because he represents a faction that has been marginalised.

If Chamisa calls for withdrawals, he will wake up to a rude awakening as many of the people in Parliament and local authorities will defy his orders, including those on his side. Tshabangu and his handlers want to make sure that he is humiliated by the people he imposed. They do not want to be seen to be directly elbowing him out as this would most likely anger party supporters.

Chamisa has limited options. His CCC opponents know that he is not brave enough to lead street protests.

However, he has to come out of his shell and provide leadership, otherwise he risks losing more supporters to Tshabangu’s faction. He cannot continue to hide behind Bible verses anymore as people no longer buy into faith without action. It is either he leads from the front, or he risks being viewed as a motivational speaker or worse still as just a social media celebrity, who tweets for attention.

Equally, Chamisa has to come to a point where he starts to accept collective leadership and admit to the fact that his ideas have failed. This includes strategic ambiguity.

Chamisa remains the most viable face of opposition currently. However, there should not be any illusion that he has monopoly over ideas and that he can take state power as an individual. This catch 22 moment presents him with the opportunity to go back to the drawing board, reconnect and reorganise with cadres from the movement.

The absurdities of clause 129(1)(k) Section 129(1)(k) allows political parties to withdraw Members of Parliament and senators, whom they say no longer belong to their political parties by writing to the Speaker of the National Assembly or president of the Senate.

The clause was overwhelmingly supported by all political parties during the constitutional-making process as political parties wanted more control.

The constitution does not even provide for the person who can write to the Speaker of the National Assembly or President of the Senate.

Anyone from a political party can write the letter. This has left the burden to know who has such authority to party constitutions. Parties, who operate without constitutions, are at risk of anyone writing to Parliament.

*CCC recalls: Hope is a finite resource*

HOW is one Sengezo Tshabangu’s recalls of Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) Members of Parliament a dress-rehearsal for politics of manipulation and inconsistence in Zimbabwe?

For students of synchronised politics, political repression lies beneath political manipulation. The end to which Zimbabwean politicians forget that hope is finite is shocking, given that the dominant theory in career politics is political realism.

The CCC politicians have now been manipulated into inconsistence. And when techniques of regime control are used to lipstick the frog of repression, opposition members are strategically excluded from political power and social influence through paranoia.

The CCC MPs have been treated like dismissed union members more than parliamentarians. A detailed plan seems to have been planned for such an eventuality, following the CCC’s strategy of ambiguity and Sadc’s involvement with Zimbabwe’s election fiasco.

The news doing the rounds is that Tshabangu is a “CCC signatory” at Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) and has also moved to bar CCC MPs from using CCC in the by-elections for the recalled MPs, something akin to the Staatsstreich or coup d’état from above canvassed by Wilheim II and his advisers.

The political landscape in Zimbabwe has thus been marked by turmoil and uncertainty, with the CCC facing a wave of recalls of its MPs.

Tshabangu’s recalls have raised questions about the tactics employed in this political manoeuvre and its implications for Zimbabwean democracy. In this article, I will delve into the complex dynamics at play, drawing parallels with historical political manipulation, including references to figures like Frederick Wilhelm I, Frederick the Great, Wilhelm II and Bismarck, while also considering the courage and initiative displayed by individuals like Crawford during wartime.