By Pieter Ziegler
In the aftermath of renewed recalling of his MPs and Councilors CCC leader Nelson Chamisa has come up with another not-so-brilliant plan straight from the womb that birthed Strategic Ambiguity.
The disengagement plan, in practice, is a politically carotid-shredding act where an already under siege opposition decides to assist the authoritarian Gvt to kill it.
Already George Charamba has responded with threats of an imminent Commission to replace the Chinhoyi Municipality after its 15 councilors disengaged.
Chamisa’s disengagement plan banks on an absent value of honour and respect for the will of the people within the ruling government.
He assumes that ZANU-PF respects electoral outcomes and the decisions of the people to choose specific leaders.
Yet, in the very existence of the current political drama, the party has shown a naked disdain for anything related to such.
At the slightest opportunity the ruling party is ready and able to supplant mass-will with its own fake patriotism agenda.
Thus, like an on-heat stag, it has no respect for any disengagement damsel spouting no-sex-before-marriage values.
Assisted Suicide
Disengagement will merely provide the ruling party with supposedly valid reasons to proceed with the castration exercise against CCC.
Secondly, not everyone in the opposition appears to understand how the disengagement exercise is supposed to work.
While some, like the Chinhoyi councilors, have withdrawn their services, others like the Norton Councilors have gone ahead to constitute Committees.
The same appears in Parliament where some notable CCC MPs such as Charlton Hwende have been given Portfolio Committees to chair.
While Binga’s Dubeko Sibanda has been calling and announcing dates for mass action, Fadzayi Mahere, like a duck to water, has excitedly taken to her new role as Higher Education Portfolio Committee Chairperson.
All in all the disengagement plan, like its sibling, the strategic ambiguity, appears to be a blank page which the leader, Chamisa, fills at his convenience with whatever feels appropriate at any moment.
In essence, the two plans are actually a spiritual supplication to the superior wisdom of the one and only vaunted redeemer of opposition politics, Nelson Chamisa.
They are not a rigid template with specific actions for a variety of situations but an open ended inquest for which Chamisa provides answers as we go along.
Indeed it’s an arduous acrobatic exercise for such a large movement and the resultant spasmic confusion is testament to that.
Biting The Bullet
However, on his part the disengagement plan reveals timidity to do the necessary which may be a full and mass resignation of all those who identify with him in the face of Mwonzora’s reincarnation as Sengezo Tshabangu.
Various relevant institutions such as Parliament of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and the Ministry of Local Government have recognised Tshabangu as the de facto CCC Secretary General.
Only the supposedly captured courts remain, either to save the day for Chamisa or relegate him to the mountains for another prayer pending another opposition revival.
Meanwhile, as stated by former Norton Independent MP Temba Mliswa, Chamisa can and must order for the resignation of all those who stand with him to trigger another round of by-elections.
He will then have to rebrand the party, bring a Constitution, go to Congress and return fully armoured against the wiles of the devil.
It’s the only path with a near-definite outcome.
Waiting on the courts to protect him, when he refused to contest election results on the basis the same courts are captured is both ironic and a not so spiritual decision.
For a spiritual man, hearing and seeing beyond the mortal and primal, he has to be decisive.