Promise Mkwananzi has announced that Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume is no longer a member of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party. Mkwananzi stated that Mafume was dismissed for associating with the party’s disputed secretary general, Sengezo Tshabangu. This came after Mafume declared that the CCC faction led by Tshabangu held a meeting in Bulawayo and appointed interim presidents for the party.
Mafume explained that Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti, and Lynette Karenyi-Kore were selected as interim presidents, with each leader serving for 90 days before passing the role to the next person. Ncube would be the first to assume this position. Mafume was elected as the party’s national spokesperson, taking over from Promise Mkwananzi in August 2023, who had held the position previously.
During the meeting, it was also decided to reactivate the MDC 2019 congress posts, resulting in Chalton Hwende resuming the position of secretary general. These appointments are temporary until the party conducts an elective congress to choose permanent leaders, according to Mafume. However, in a statement seen by Pindula News, Mkwananzi, who still identifies himself as the CCC spokesperson, declared that these appointments hold no validity, implying internal factional conflicts within the party. Mkwananzi said:
We have called the present press conference to update the citizens of Zimbabwe, the International community and all stakeholders of the change project on several key developments within the party and in our spaces within the governance structure of the country.
As you may now be aware, the party’s founder and leader, President Advocate Nelson Chamisa resigned as leader and head of the Citizens Coalition for Change; a history which we shall not regurgitate at this presser. It is at the backdrop of the said resignation that the party’s Citizens National Assembly convened and resolved the question of the leadership vacuum occasioned by the President’s resignation from the party. The undoubted consensus within the party’s membership and progressive leadership is that the President had become a target of a deliberate project sponsored by the parallel state and implemented by a fatigued and positions hungry lot seeking to sustain a Zanu PF rule in Zimbabwe.
It is important that we clarify that the resignation of the President was by no means intended to burn the party and its assets to the ground. The resignation has in fact breathed life to and sustained the fight for democratic transition in our country.
The struggle for democratic transition in Zimbabwe is undergoing a transition. That transition, entails the falling away of an old culture, old tendencies and old politics and to some extent, old personalities and characters. There is an unstoppable and refreshing birth of the new; characterised by a new culture of politics that is people centred as opposed to being position centred. The sacrifice by President Nelson Chamisa to abandon an institution which he founded must be understood in the context of this painful but real transition. We have to assert at this juncture that the CNA has resolved that the CCC and its deployees (MPs and Councillors) remain committed to the transitional process which will deliver a New Great Zimbabwe led by Adv. Nelson Chamisa.
Let there be no doubt, the party and its membership, represented by the resolutions of the CNA has given the task of managing the internal transitional processes of the party to Senator Jameson Timba who leads the Administration Bureau of the party with representation from all the ten provinces in Zimbabwe. Senator Jameson Timba, a senior political leader within the democratic movement in Zimbabwe carries a collective and technical mandate of running the affairs of the party ahead of President Nelson Chamisa’s treatise on the next step. In conformity with his mandate, Senator Jameson Timba announced a series of key appointments in the party’s Parliamentary leadership structure which has been confirmed by the Parliament of Zimbabwe.
All party deployees in Parliament are called upon to co-operate and work with the stated leadership in executing the party’s legislative agenda and in advancing the interests of the citizens. Any acts of insubordination, sabotage and rebellion shall be considered an affront to the country’s democratisation agenda and shall be meted with legal and political processes to ensure struggle discipline.
The party has taken note of the growing concerns around numerous evictions which have been carried out by the ZANU PF government in various parts of the country. We are concerned with the obvious affront to human rights and livelihood of many Zimbabwean citizens affected by what appears to be consequences of an unclosed chapter of a fractured land reform program. The party has thus appointed its Legal and Parliamentary Affairs bureau head, Honourable Agency Gumbo to lead a commission constituted by Members of Parliament and Councillors to embark on a national fact finding mission which will inform the party’s response to this growing national concern.
We further wish to communicate, unequivocally to the public, that there is a team which is presently moving around provinces carrying a special mandate of informing our base on the state of affairs in the democratic alternative. We dispel any notion and or innuendos thereof, by our detractors who seek to suggest a rift and lack of consensus on the strategic steps which are a parcel of the party’s internal transitional process. Without saying much, we advise the citizens of Zimbabwe to remain vigilant and understand that there is cohesion in the processes currently underway.
We have taken note of some rotten apples seeking to further the contamination within the party and its deployees. We have heard timid whispers emanating from Holiday Inn in Bulawayo wherein one Jacob Mafume mischievously makes pronouncements about the leadership of the CCC. We state categorically that the said pronouncements are null and void and are not a representation of the collective wisdom and resolution of the Citizens National Assembly.
We wish to state that Mr Mafume is not authorised to speak for and on behalf of the party, his obvious link with Sengezo Tshabangu and the unlawful recalls has now been confirmed. His reference to a supposed link between the CCC and the leadership of the MDC A is not only mischievous but a confirmation that he has ceased to be a member of the CCC. Accordingly, any deployee or leader of CCC who associates with this mischief will automatically cease to be a member of the party and the relevant political and legal consequences shall ensue.
Promise Mkwananzi
National Spokesperson
ONE PEOPLE ONE NATION ONE VISION