Canceling CCC congress will not only "keep infiltrators stewing" but citizens and democracy itself too W Mukori

 

“KEEP THEM GUESSING & TOSSING, STEWING & ROASTING! THROW THEM OFF BALANCE … Remember they infiltrate, manipulate and capture using 4 things ..1.Structures 2. internal Processes 3. Law-fare 4. Ambitious/hungry characters. Be so unpredictable so they can do nothing but assume.” Twittered Nelson Chamisa.

He was in reply to calls for CCC to hold primary elections elect candidates for the upcoming 2023 elections. A few weeks ago, he similarly dismissed calls for the party to launch its constitution and hold a party congress to elect the leaders giving the same reason – he is fearful of infiltration.

When Chamisa launched the party in January 2022, he insisted it was not rebranding MDC Alliance because the Citizens Coalition for Change was a democratic and people’s party as the name implied. What does a people’s party mean?  

It was the Greeks who proposed democracy as a system of government in which the citizens themselves instituted the rules governing how society would live, enforced the rules and for their own benefit. Hence the reason democracy is defined as government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The greatest threat to democracy comes from within as human history would testify. It is irrelevant how one got into a position of power and authority but having got there they primeval instinct is secure power for themselves. Even those who had praised the merits of democracy and even benefit from the system will suddenly develop the jitters concerned by the consequence of ordinary people making key decisions.

Of course, the Greeks too were concerned the dangers of democracy producing an amateur government. And, instead of the country excelling in every field of human endeavour as Greece did, the Golden Age; see the country dragged into misery or worse because of the mediocre governance. The resolved to save themselves from amateur government in two ways;

1)     First and foremost, they placed great emphasis on the need to educate all their citizens and what better vehicle to achieve that than freedom of the individual, freedom of expression, open debate and meritocratic competition – the essence of the Olympic games.

 

2)     Second, no one individual or group was ever entrusted with absolute power and authority and, even when, for whatever reason, someone was granted or seized absolute power, the whole society was restless to have power restored the back to the rightful owners – the people.

 

For all Chamisa’s claims that CCC is a people’s party he is clearly hell bent in ensuring that it is not by adopting the very measures that would make it a people’s party. When the Greeks wanted citizens   educated Chamisa is busy stifling all discuss and debate. The decision not to hold the party’s congress was made by him alone as there is nothing to suggest even the interim leadership was consulted.

Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess precisely because the country has had the great misfortune of have political leaders with not aa drop of democratic blood in the veins. Mugabe stifle debate and competition at a party level and surrounded himself with utterly useless individuals who said nothing when the dictator pursued voodoo economic policies and even when he committed such heinous crimes as Gukurahundi massacre.

At a national level Mugabe imposed the de facto one party dictatorship that stifle all debate and democratic competition driving away all quality men and women out of politics and hence the country’s political paralysis. There are no quality leaders in both the ruling party and the opposition.

As much as Nelson Chamisa would want to claim to be a democrat, his track record tells its own different story. By stopping party elections and congress you are not only keeping infiltrators stewing and roasting most important of all the citizens too!

Just as a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. So far there is nothing in CCC to suggest it is a citizens’ party, a people’s party. Nothing!