ASSERTIONS by former opposition CCC leader Nelson Chamisa that the country must hold fresh elections before 2028 are part of his bid to salvage the little that is left of his faltering political career through smuggling himself into Government or, at the very least, consummate another Government of National Unity, via the back door, as exclusively revealed by this publication last week.

However, the second GNU prospect is not going to find takers within the Government of Zimbabwe which has already found traction among the masses with its developmental thrust.

Days after he ‘quit’ his party, the embattled former opposition leader told a local weekly, The Standard, that he would push for fresh elections to ‘correct’ the outcome of the August 23 2023 harmonised general polls which he claimed were a ‘gigantic fraud’. 

The idea is to keep the country in perpetual election mode.

But we can reveal Chamisa’s calls for fresh polls were part of a long-drawn-out agenda that is being pursued by a leader from a neighbouring country after his efforts to bring Zimbabwe to the SADC agenda failed during the November 4 2023 Extraordinary Summit in Luanda, Angola, where he sought to tarnish the country’s elections.

Two previous attempts, both supported by a local academic and a former ZANU PF member whose bid for the presidency faltered before the polls, to call for a SADC Extraordinary Summit on Zimbabwe, had been snubbed by the majority of the bloc’s leaders who all endorsed the August 23 elections.

Zimbabwe will host the next SADC Ordinary Summit in August this year where peace and security, economic co-operation and development will be on the agenda while elections will also be discussed and firmly endorsed by the regional bloc.

The anti-Zimbabwe elections strategy also failed to gain traction with the world soon after the August 23 2023 elections when the chairperson of the SADC EOM and former Zambia Vice-President Nevers Mumba produced a ‘preliminary’ report that had been authored with the help of some EU countries and the US.

The ‘report’ viciously attacked the polls. 

Mumba, whose several meetings with elements hostile to Zimbabwe prior to August 23, had laid bare his regime change agenda.

Hence Chamisa’s latest fresh elections rantings.

It has been a tumultuous seven months since his much touted ‘strategic ambiguity’, designed to sideline CCC bigwigs, started terribly backfiring. Chamisa would go on to be mauled in the August 23 Presidential elections before Sengezo Tshabangu, a CCC self-proclaimed secretary-general, staged a palace coup under the guise of a party cleansing exercise.

Tshabangu would go on to claim Chamisa had defiled democracy by imposing his cohorts on Parliament while failing to create structures in the party, among a raft of other allegations.

That dreadful period which culminated in his abrupt ‘resignation’ from CCC on January 25 had been preceded by his usual infantile antics where he tried, but failed, to divert attention from his self-inflicted cross through the lie that he had been trying to hold talks with President Emmerson Mnangagwa but was being blocked by what he said were ‘ZANU PF hardliners’. 

Therein lies the tragedy with his grandstanding — something that has unsurprisingly afflicted his supporters.

In public, Chamisa has launched attack after attack on President Mnangagwa, who has typically maintained his silence, graciously refusing to be drawn into those infantile antics but rather choosing to focus on national development.

This publication has challenged Chamisa to prove his worth by turning around the sorry fortunes of urban areas controlled by his inept Councillors but the results are there for everyone to see.  

Job Sikhala has become the latest victim of those angry outbursts after he insinuated in an interview last week that CCC leaders had thrown him under the bus during his time in remand prison.

Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, Charlton Hwende and Jacob Mafume, among several others linked to Tshabangu, have not been spared from the tongue lashing.

This can only be the lull before a very violent political storm in the opposition camp!

“2028 is too far. People have urgent issues that need to be resolved. We don’t have the luxury of waiting until 2028. We know that we have 2023 that has not been fixed and resolved,” said Chamisa.

“If you look at it, which is nearer 2023 or 2028? 2023 is not a closed chapter. It’s not a done deal. I have a mandate not from a party . . .  I am a product of the people of Zimbabwe, over two million people.”

He then unwittingly let the ‘neighbouring leader and Mumba’ cat out of the bag.

“We have petitioned SADC and, as we speak, SADC is seized with that matter because we wrote to them to say we have an issue.”

What is critical for the country’s leadership is to maintain their hitherto stance of refusing to be part of these childish antics.

They have a country to govern and a sanctions-battered economy to fix.