"CCC and MDC are two different entities!" St Paul's Damascus moment was about a lot more than changing his name W Mukori

“CCC and MDC are two different entities so please your arguments have no basis, and it lacks facts. We are in 2023. MDC then was Tsvangirai and ZANU was Mugabe,” complained Jimmy Marunza.

Nelson Chamisa and his CCC friends from MDC Alliance cum MDC-T rebranded their new political party and called it CCC but we should not be fooled into believing they are now squeaky clean. During the GNU days they sold out by failing to implement even one democratic reform even when they had the golden opportunity to do so.

Worse still, they have since given up on reforms and free elections since the GNU debacle by participating in the 2013 and then 2018 elections knowing fully well Zanu PF was rigging the elections and doing so would only give Zanu PF legitimacy. They have done so out of greed; pure and simple!

“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the (2013) elections,” confessed Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”

CCC are hell bent on participating in these 2023 elections knowing fully well the whole election process is flawed and that participating will only give the process some modicum of “credibility”, as Coltart put it, and thus give vote rigging Zanu PF some modicum of political legitimacy. Once again, they are participating out of greed.

CCC rebranding is no different from Mnangagwa’s Second Republic rebranding of Zanu PF. The dictator is demanding of us all not only forget what Zanu PF has done from 1980 to November 2017; “let bygone by bygones”, he argued. He too, just like Chamisa and company, is refusing to held to account for what Zanu PF has done until November 2017 although he has not only a senior member in the Zanu PF governments throughout those years; he was Mugabe’s henchman!

The Mugabe dictatorship lasted 37 years because Mnangagwa played a major role in imposing and retaining the de facto one-party dictatorship by spearheading the 1983 to 1987 Gukurahundi massacre and carrying out the blatant rigging of elections. Mnangagwa, by his own admission, was the principal player in the 2008 election coup that denying MDC the keys to State House.

Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies promised the Second Republic will have “zero tolerance on corruption” and will hold free and fair elections. Corruption is now into overdrive as the ongoing Al Jazeera Gold Mafia documentary is revealing. The regime blatantly rigged the 2018 elections and is doing the same now with the 2023 elections.

When Saul had his Damascus moment, he was completely transformed from the zealot persecuting and murdering believers of Jesus Christ to one of the most outstanding Christian evangelists of all time. Even if Saul had never changed his name to Paul his work from that dramatic moment on the road to Damascus earned him the heavenly acclaim and rightly honoured as a Saint!

Both Emmerson Mnangagwa and Nelson Chamisa have rebranded their political parties from Zanu PF to Zanu PF Second Republic, MDC cum MDC-T cum MDC A to CCC respectively for the sake of running away from their dismal past and to deceive the populous by claiming they have changed when they have not change one bit! They have cast off the old party regalia but not its old dirty habits. A cobra does not seize to a deadly snake just because it has shed off its old skin. It was not the change of name from Saul to Paul that made him a Saint it was the transformation from a murderous zealot to an Christian evangelist per excellence!