Award-winning journalist and government critic Hopewell Chin’ono said that disputed CCC interim secretary general Sengezo Tshabangu’s failure to field candidates in five wards for the 03 February 2024 by-elections, thereby allowing ZANU PF to take them uncontested, invalidates his justification for recalling the party’s elected representatives.
Tshabangu has recalled dozens of CCC MPs and councillors since October, claiming that the affected individuals were imposed as candidates for the August 2023 general elections by some selfish party members.
Further, Tshabangu recently obtained a High Court order barring the recalled candidates, who had been sponsored by CCC leader Nelson Chamisa and his allies, from running in the by-elections.
This prompted the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to declare that the five ZANU PF candidates for the respective wards “have been duly elected as members of the local authorities with effect from the 3rd of February 2024.”
Posting on X (formerly Twitter), Chin’ono said those who still defend Tshabangu’s claim that he was resolving undemocratic issues in CCC need “to have their head examined at Ingutsheni”.
Ingutsheni Hospital is a healthcare institution located in Belmont East, Bulawayo and is the largest psychiatric hospital in Zimbabwe. Wrote Chin’ono:
Anyone who still thinks that Sengezo Tshabangu is resolving undemocratic issues in the main opposition CCC needs to have their head examined at Ingutsheni.
Sengezo Tshabangu ILLEGALLY recalled 5 elected CCC councillors in these 5 wards, on account of so-called party impositions.
He went to court to block genuine CCC representatives from contesting in the upcoming by-elections which he triggered with the help of ZANUPF and captured state institutions, and he did so without even having fielded any contestants.
So essentially he gifted these 5 wards to ZANUPF, this is democracy being ripped apart right before the eyes of the whole world including the Commonwealth which the ZANU PF regime wants to join.
How does anyone sane support this retrogressive political charlatan who is removing elected officials to benefit a corrupt ruling party that has torn the country’s right to political representation into pieces?
Essentially Tshabangu has taken away the right for communities to have someone who speaks on their behalf.
ZANU PF is happy because nobody will challenge its corrupt political rule as a representative of those communities.
However, self-exiled former ZANU PF Politburo member Jonathan Moyo, has defended Tshabangu, in 2015, the then MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai failed to field candidates for the by-elections to fill vacancies that were created by his party after it had recalled several of its MPs.
Responding to Douglas Coltart who had suggested that Tshabangu was serving ZANU PF interests, Moyo said:
Come on. Is this a legal or political analysis? Whatever it is, it’s very lazy, if not just outright malicious.
Whose interests did Morgan Tsvangirai serve when he recalled MPs in some 22 or so constituencies that caused the June 2015 by-elections, in which neither his MDC-T nor the PDP led by Hon Tendai Biti fielded candidates?
ZANU PF romped to victory and took control of key constituencies in opposition strongholds like Bulawayo and Harare.
Did you make the kind of noise you are making now, or that was ok because it was Tsvangirai gifting ZANU PF the constituencies in similar circumstances?
Your politics are too self-righteous. To understand the source of your political challenges, you and your lot desperately need self-examination before pointing fingers elsewhere. Introspect and learn!
-Pindula
In other news – Selmor Mtukudzi shares her father Oliver Mtukudzi’s lobola list he paid in Rhodesia dollars
Popular Zimbabwean musician Selmor Mtukudzi has posted her late father Oliver Mtukudzi’s roora/lobola (bride price) list his in-laws asked him to pay when he married his first wife, Melody Murape.
Melody Murape is Selmor’s mother. According to a calculation done by 3-mob.com, Mtukudzi was asked to pay 523 Rhodesian dollars. At the time the roora list was drafted (1978), one British pound was equivalent to two Rhodesian dollars, which translates to a total of GBP262.50. Read More
