Sengezo Tshabangu, who claims to be the interim Secretary-General of the Opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), has defied the party leader Nelson Chamisa’s instructions. Tshabangu ordered party councillors and Members of Parliament to resume their duties, going against the decision made by the CCC’s highest decision-making body, the Citizens’ National Assembly (CNA), which called for disengagement in protest of the recalling of 15 MPs and some councillors. In a statement seen by Pindula News, Tshabangu even threatened to recall members who did not follow his directive. Read the statement:
UPDATE BY THE INTERIM SECRETARY GENERAL FOLLOWING THE RECALL OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT.
The launch of CCC as a political label by the National Council of the then MDC-A in January 2022 ahead of the parliamentary and local authority by-elections which were like a mini-general election on 26 March 2022, was a high watermark in the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe. It was a sacred covenant with democracy, peace, justice, multiculturalism and other values that are the bedrock of prosperity, national unity and stability necessary for the sustenance of lives and the uplifting of the livelihoods of all Zimbabweans.
After this glorious start, it was with utter horror and disbelief to later witness the desecration of our founding values, the values which placed the citizen at the centre of our politics as the driver and beneficiary of our party’s decision-making.
The nomination process for the 2023 harmonised general election was turned into a circus as party officials ran roughshod over the will of the people. In some cases, candidates nominated by citizens were disqualified by dubious vetoes that had no legitimate basis at all, besides the pursuit of nefarious personal agendas.
In Bulawayo, for example, total strangers from other parts of the country were imported to replace local candidates selected by the local community. In a nutshell, our internal electoral processes became a corrupt and blasphemous insult and a brazen act of disenfranchisement.
It is against this background of a rigged internal electoral process that I, as a bona fide Interim Secretary General, after nationwide consultation with the citizenry and our structures as they existed in January 2022, and as they still are, decided to bite the bullet to stand up for justice and truth and to recall those MPs who are a product of a fraudulent and corrupt internal electoral process that is inconsistent with and contrary to our constitutional ethos and founding as political party.
It is unacceptable that we present ourselves to the Zimbabwean body politic and the outside world as doyens of democracy while practicing naked fascism in pursuit of personal ambitions. The recalls are redemptive, as they seek to reaffirm and entrench a democratic culture where dystopia had developed and was gathering alarming momentum. As a political party based on constitutionalism, we must walk the talk if we are to institutionalise constitutional democracy in our beautiful motherland, Zimbabwe.
Our struggle is not about replacing faces it is about making democracy work as a living everyday life style. It is only through genuine and meaningful democracy that our country can turn the page, and go forward, otherwise what we have witnessed since 24 January 2022 has been a nightmarish version of ZANU PF, which has been playing out like a horror movie dubbed “wapusa wapusa” politics. We refuse to stand by and watch when the party is turned away from its social democratic and constitutional roots into a terrible clone of ZANU PF under the false and personalised guise of a movement for citizens.
It is for the reasons clearly outlined above that the recall of Members of Parliament was and is warranted in terms of section 129 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe.
And now that our political party is cleansing itself of all mala fides and chicanery that are foreign and injurious to our people and their aspirations, we hereby advise and direct all our deployees as follows:
1. All CCC councillors must report for work on time and prepared to serve and to be of service to all our people without fail, save in circumstances seeking or requiring verifiable medical attention or compassionate leave.
2. According to the Parliament Hansard, CCC Members of the National Assembly were as a matter of fact and law suspended for six (6) sittings with immediate effect, which equates to two weeks of sittings. Once this suspension has been served, all CCC Members of the National Assembly as well as Members of the Senate must attend all parliamentary programmes, activities and sittings without fail, save in circumstances seeking or requiring verifiable medical attention or compassionate leave. Members of the Senate should continue to attend all Parliamentary programmes, activities and sittings without fail.
3. Any CCC Member of the National Assembly or CCC Senator who does not comply with the foregoing will be recalled without further ado and redeployed from Parliament or their local authority.
4. Last but not least, the office of the Interim Secretary General has noted with contempt a statement doing rounds on social media and mainstream media purporting to be expelling the President, Adv. Nelson Chamisa, from the party and to be coming from the hand of the Interim Secretary General. The fraudulent statement is devoid of truth and reality, and must therefore be ignored and rejected with the contempt it deserves.