CCC acting president Welshman Ncube has accused former party leader Nelson Chamisa of autocracy and authoritarianism and turning the party into a theocracy before he resigned last month.

In a wide-ranging interview with Bulawayo-based online news outlet CITE on Tuesday, Ncube said Chamisa’s leadership style created the crisis bedevilling the Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC) party. He said:

We got here because we now had a situation where(by) collectively, the democratic collective leadership no longer worked as one and we were unable to meet as elected individuals, as elected leadership, to address the challenges that we were facing.

We had suspended meetings of the national council. Some of us believe that we are fighting ZANU PF which is authoritarian, which is undemocratic and which has one centre of power. We must demonstrate that we are the opposite of ZANU PF.

We must do while in opposition things we are expected to do when we get into government, not running an autocratic, an authoritarian, theocratic opposition then expect sincere genuine people to believe that once in power, you no longer believe in autocracy and theocracy.

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These are the differences we had in opposition.

Ncube was recently appointed CCC president, albeit on a rotational basis alongside Tendai Biti and Lynette Karenyi Kore.

The three politicians were elected MDC Alliance vice presidents at the party’s Elective Congress held in Gweru in 2019, with Chamisa as the president.

They remained in their positions until January 2022 when the MDC Alliance rebranded to CCC but gradually lost their influence as Chamisa began to increasingly centralise power in his hands.

Ncube said he was elected to be the first acting president of the opposition because of his seniority. Ncube said:

Now that the president of the party had resigned and dissociated himself from the party, we needed to step up to the plate, take responsibility and ensure that the party is brought back on track, and hence that we will rotate.

The standing committee decided that I would go first as being the most senior of the three vice presidents as elected at Gweru, therefore, I have been mandated in the next 90 days to do all that I can, working with the other vice presidents, working with the secretariat of the party, working with the rest of the departments of the party to address the challenges that the party face today.

Ncube revealed that he last spoke to Chamisa two months ago. He also distanced himself from the recall of dozens of CCC MPs and councillors that was spearheaded by Sengezo Tshabangu.

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