Chamisa refuses to reunite with former MDC and CCC comrades to form a new vibrant party… Was he hired to destroy the opposition?

HARARE – In the fractured and turbulent world of Zimbabwean politics, the once-bright star of the opposition, Nelson Chamisa, now finds himself at the centre of a storm of his own making. His recent, and very public, refusal to entertain a reunion with his former comrades has not only deepened the fissures within the country’s democratic forces but has also given oxygen to a dangerous and persistent question: was Nelson Chamisa hired to destroy the opposition from within?

Just this month, as calls for a united front against the ruling Zanu-PF party and its controversial “2030 Agenda” reached a crescendo, the former leader of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) delivered a hammer blow to any hopes of reconciliation. Douglas Mwonzora, the leader of the rival MDC-T faction, had extended an olive branch, appealing to Chamisa and other estranged opposition figures to bury the hatchet and forge a new, formidable alliance. The goal was clear: to challenge President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s rumoured ambitions to extend his term beyond the constitutionally mandated limit of 2028.

Chamisa’s response was not just a rejection; it was a declaration of war against his own past. He dismissed Mwonzora’s overtures with a cryptic and condescending instruction to simply “smile” and forget any notion of a reunion. He branded his former allies as “old faces” and “baggage of the past,” accusing them of being collaborators in a grand Zanu-PF scheme to undermine the opposition and, more specifically, to destroy him personally.

“I can tell you that everything in the past is not going to be part of the new. You don’t use old wine skins to carry the new wine and we are clear about that,” Chamisa told journalists in Harare, as his words dripped with a mixture of religious metaphor and political finality.

“They worked with Zanu-PF to destroy us and that is common position. Forgiveness is about us not carrying those grudges but looking forward being united by everything. But you can’t repeat the same mistakes. Only a dog feeds on its vomit as it’s meal. We are not dogs.”

These are powerful, damning words. Yet, to a growing chorus of sceptics, they ring hollow. The very accusations Chamisa levels at his former colleagues are now being turned back on him with increasing ferocity. For many observers, the timeline of events leading up to this moment paints a deeply troubling picture, one that suggests a calculated and deliberate dismantling of the very movement he claimed to lead.

The seeds of this suspicion were sown long before his latest outburst. The unravelling of the CCC, a party he founded in January 2022, began in earnest shortly after the disputed general elections of August 2023. A previously obscure figure, Sengezo Tshabangu, emerged from the woodwork, declaring himself the party’s “interim Secretary-General” – a position that, ironically, did not even exist within the CCC’s deliberately “structureless” framework. Armed with this self-proclaimed authority, Tshabangu initiated a series of devastating recalls, systematically purging dozens of newly elected CCC Members of Parliament and councillors from their seats.

What was most baffling to supporters and analysts alike was Chamisa’s perplexing inaction. While he publicly labelled Tshabangu an “impostor” and a Zanu-PF proxy, his response was seen as curiously muted. There was no decisive legal or political counter-offensive to protect his own elected officials.

The courts, in a series of rulings that surprised few, consistently sided with Tshabangu, validating the recalls and barring the purged MPs from contesting the subsequent by-elections. The result was a political bloodbath. Zanu-PF, which had failed to secure a two-thirds majority in the general election, was gifted it on a silver platter, allowing them the parliamentary muscle to amend the constitution at will.

This is the crux of the allegation against Chamisa. How could a leader, who had fought so tenaciously on the campaign trail, stand by and watch his party be disembowelled with such surgical precision? To his detractors, the only logical explanation was that he was a willing participant in the charade. Whispers turned into loud accusations. Political analyst Tendai Ruben Mbofana articulated the sentiment bluntly, suggesting that both Chamisa and Tshabangu had been “bought” by the ruling party to orchestrate the opposition’s demise. The theory gained traction: Chamisa’s role was to “do nothing,” to create a leadership vacuum and allow the recalls to proceed unchallenged, thereby neutralising the only credible threat to Zanu-PF’s hegemony.

Chamisa’s eventual resignation from the CCC in January 2024, exactly two years after its formation, did little to quell these suspicions. In a rambling 13-page statement, he declared he would no longer “swim in a river with hungry crocodiles” and that the CCC had been “criminally handed over to ZANU-PF.” He was abandoning the party, he claimed, because it had been fatally “infiltrated.”

But critics were quick to pounce. Harare-based analyst Alexander Rusero pointed out the flaw in Chamisa’s logic: “You don’t run away from a movement that you are leading because of infiltration; if you are in control, you purge the infiltrators.” For many, the resignation was not a principled stand but an admission of failure, or worse, the final act in a pre-scripted performance. His strategy of “strategic ambiguity” – creating a party without a constitution or formal structures to supposedly avoid infiltration – had backfired spectacularly. As the academic Ibbo Mandaza noted, his “gamble of having a structureless party failed,” creating a cult of personality that was vulnerable to exactly the kind of internal sabotage that transpired.

The plot thickens further with revelations of backroom negotiations for a so-called “Government of National Unity” (GNU). Reports from May 2024 suggested that the very figures who had taken over the CCC, including Tshabangu and Welshman Ncube, were in talks with Zanu-PF to extend President Mnangagwa’s term beyond 2028. The trade-off? A power-sharing deal that would see these compromised opposition figures rewarded with government positions.

Welshman Ncube, who was appointed acting CCC president by one faction post-Chamisa, was disturbingly candid about his willingness to negotiate. He stated that in any dialogue, “everything will be on the table,” and that if an inclusive government would solve the country’s problems, then “so be it.” Tshabangu was even more direct, stating, “We should be part of that government.”

While Chamisa himself is not directly implicated in these GNU talks, his actions created the very conditions that made them possible. By abandoning the CCC and leaving a leadership vacuum, he handed the party’s remnants to individuals who appear all too willing to cut a deal with the ruling party, potentially betraying the millions who voted for change.

Now, as he prepares to launch a “new political baby,” a “citizens movement” untainted by the “baggage of the past,” the questions surrounding his motives refuse to disappear. Is this a genuine attempt to build a new, authentic opposition, or is it simply the next phase in a more complex and cynical game? His refusal to reunite with any of his former colleagues, even those who were themselves victims of the MDC’s internal power struggles, suggests a man determined to remain isolated, a lone figurehead accountable to no one.

The tragedy for Zimbabwe is that the electorate is left with no viable political alternative. The once-mighty opposition, which posed a genuine threat to Zanu-PF’s 43-year grip on power, now lies in ruins, fragmented and consumed by infighting and allegations of treachery. Whether Nelson Chamisa was a willing architect of this destruction or simply a naive leader outmanoeuvred by a more ruthless political machine remains the subject of intense debate. But as long as he refuses to account for the spectacular collapse of the party he founded, and as long as he continues to reject any form of collective action, the shadow of suspicion will follow him, and the question will linger: was he hired to destroy the opposition?