In a wide-ranging interview on Skyz Metro FM, Welshman Ncube claimed that former Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa’s “strategic ambiguity” is solely to blame for the chaos and confusion that engulfed the party before and after last year’s general elections.
Ahead of the August 3, 2023 polls, CCC did not conduct primary elections to select candidates, instead employing a controversial system that sidelined several long-serving opposition activists in favour of newcomers.
Then, in the aftermath of the elections, party activist Sengezo Tshabangu seized control of the CCC, aided by state institutions, and embarked on a series of infamous recalls that ultimately gave ZANU-PF a majority in the National Assembly.
According to Ncube, Chamisa’s “strategic ambiguity” rendered everyone within the party as mere onlookers, except for Chamisa himself, who even went so far as to call himself the “change champion in chief.”
Ncube also claimed that Tshabangu was never elected as the interim secretary-general of the CCC, but rather took advantage of the “strategic confusion” within the party to unilaterally appoint himself to the position. Said Ncube (via Chronicle):
Over and above that, as we headed for the August 2023 elections, there was already serious confusion within the party as to who held what position and who did not hold any position.
This other day we will wake up having Advocate Fadzai Mahere as the spokesperson and the next day it will be Mr Promise Mkhwananzi, all this under the animal, which they called ‘strategic ambiguity’.
This is what caused all this confusion, which ended up giving birth to an interim secretary known as Tshabangu, people that we never elected to those positions as party members.
Ncube, who has positioned himself as the interim president of one of the rival factions within CCC, that his group is actively engaged in restructuring the party in preparation for an elective congress. He said:
After this critical exercise, we will then take the party back to the people for them to elect their leaders of choice and hopefully, those who will be elected won’t make the same fatal mistakes we did like allowing this strategic ambiguity animal, which devoured the party.
Nelson Chamisa resigned from the CCC party in January 2024, asserting that the party had been infiltrated and hijacked by ZANU PF through its embedded agents.
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