CCC are participating in these elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy out of greed. Will penny finally drop on 24 August! W Mukori

 “Sunday was a bad day to forget for Amos Chibaya in Bulawayo where he was heckled and rebuffed by an angry CCC crowd, after Advocate Nelson Chamisa sent him there to calm down boiling tensions over CCC's imposition of candidates - for the August 2023 harmonised general election - who either resoundingly lost the party's derided "Bereka Mwana" [queue behind your candidate] community selection caucuses, or who did not even participate in those caucuses,” reported Bulawayo 24.

“The angry CCC crowd Chibaya had gone to address told him to go back and demanded that, instead, Chamisa himself should come to Bulawayo to explain his wanton imposition of candidates in the province, apologise and remove from Bulawayo province the culprits who connived with him to enable the imposition!”

We all make mistakes it is just that with MDC/CCC leaders they seem to blunder from pillar to post. When they failed to implement even one token reform in five years of the 2008 to 2013 GNU, it was more than a mistake; they proved beyond all doubt that they were (and still are) corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent. 

It was USA ambassador to Zimbabwe 2004 to 2007, Chris Dell, who said Morgan Tsvangirai, then leader of MDC, “was a flawed and indecisive character who would be an albatross round the nation’s neck if he was ever to assume any public office.” 

The ambassador could have said the same of all the other MDC leaders. And, alas, MDC leaders have been in public office for the last 23 years including the 5 years in the GNU. They have not only failed to implement even one token reform during the GNU but, ever since the GNU debacle, they have insisted on participating in flawed elections only to give Zanu PF legitimacy and perpetuating the dictatorship. 

The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb to elect MDC/CCC leaders into power on the understanding the party would bring about the democratic changes necessary to stop Zanu PF rigging elections. Most people had no clue what these democratic changes were, even to this day with the benefit of hindsight, they still have no clue what they are much less how they were to come about. And so many Zimbabweans did not realise that the GNU was THE golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms.

It is therefore not surprising that many Zimbabweans have never blamed MDC/CCC leaders for wasting the GNU golden opportunity to implement the reforms. How can they, when they themselves have failed to see it as such.

By insisting on participating in these flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy, MDC/CCC leaders have become the milestone round the nation’s neck dragging us all into the crashing abyss, as ambassador Dell had predicted. What is infuriating is that MDC leaders know they are now aiding, abetting and perpetuating the Zanu PF dictatorship and still the do it out of greed.

“The (2013) 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,” confessed Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

It took the people of Zimbabwe nearly 20 years to finally accept that Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies were not the liberation heroes and heroines the nation imagined them to be. Ever since the country’s independence in 1980, Zanu PF had ridden roughshod over the people, denying them their basic freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful vote and even the right to life. In 1983 to 1987 the nation had witnessed the Gukurahundi massacre, over 20 000 innocent civilians were murdered in cold blood, whose primary purpose was to force PF Zapu to sign the Unity Accord and pave the way for the imposition of the de facto one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. 

It was in the late 1990s that the penny finally dropped in the nation’s collective mind with the realisation that Zanu PF was a party of corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs and, most significantly, that as long as the party continued to enjoy the carte blanche powers to rig elections to stay in power, the nation is doomed. The rallying call for democratic changes to stop Zanu PF rigging elections was loud and unstoppable.

In 1999, Morgan Tsvangirai and his friends launched their political party calling it the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to echo the popular demand for democratic change. After 23 years on the political stage, 5 of which in the GNU, the party has not only failed to deliver even one democratic change but, worst of all, its leaders are the ones now helping Zanu PF stay in power for 30 pieces of silver!

Many Zimbabweans are slowly but surely waking up to the reality that Nelson Chamisa and his CCC friends have given up on implement democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections and their promise to win rigged elections is an oxymoron. Come 24 August 2023, the morning after the voting day, Zanu PF will claim yet another landslide victory proving once again that Chamisa’s big win was just hot air. Will that be the final straw that broke the camel’s back and forced Zimbabweans to finally wake up to the political reality that CCC will never deliver the democratic changes and free elections the nation has been dying for dating back to the fight to end white colonial rule!