Former MDC Secretary General Welshman Ncube, who currently serves as the interim leader of one of several CCC factions, said on Wednesday that the harm inflicted on the party by former leader Nelson Chamisa surpasses the impact of the recalls conducted by Sengezo Tshabangu.
Tshabangu unilaterally recalled scores of CCC MPs and councillors, and fired them from the party, thereby allowing ZANU PF to attain a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
Addressing the journalists at a CCC national council meeting in Harare, Ncube said that under Chamisa’s leadership, the opposition party strayed from its democratic principles, abandoning both accountability and transparency.
Ncube also rubbished the stance of his erstwhile CCC colleagues that Tshabangu was an imposter, saying the latter was in the CCC’s top hierarchy and assumed the position of “interim secretary general” through strategic ambiguity. He said:
We acknowledge that contrary to what some of us have said in the past that we didn’t know Senator Tshabangu, we did. He was a member of the national executive and national council.
He attended the fateful meeting of January 22, 2022, but he was not secretary general. He assumed that position under strategic ambiguity.
Our competitive advantage in electoral terms relates to who we are as agents of democratic change. Not just in terms of what we say, but also in terms of what we do.
The damage is there. But the biggest damage is how far back this period (under Chamisa) has taken us in the struggle for a democratic alternative.
Ncube said it will take many years and hard work to undo the damage inflicted on the opposition movement by Chamisa. He said:
It will be years and years before we can restore the agenda that the opposition is a democratic alternative to ZANU PF. We are not underestimating the task that faces us. It is huge. The damage is huge.
This council has made a call that whatever it takes, we must understand that the ideals of the liberation struggle are upheld.
Some of the officials elected at the 2019 Gweru Congress of the MDC-Alliance, which was nullified by the courts, attended the meeting.
They included Lynette Karenyi-Kore (co-vice president), and Chalton Hwende (secretary-general).
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