Not the same Chamisa I backed in 2018: Jonathan Moyo

Not the same Chamisa I backed in 2018: Jonathan Moyo

 

Nevanji Munyaradzi Chiondegwa

 

In a slap to the face, former Higher and Tertiary Education Minister and ZANU PF Politburo member Professor Jonathan Moyo have said that Nelson Chamisa, the CCC leader, has changed big time from the Chamisa of 2018 and it is not only Chamisa who is allowed to change.

 

Writing on microblog Twitter while responding to critics who have said that he is no longer the same Jonathan Moyo who criticised Operation Restore Legacy and are calling him a chameleon and flip-flopper, Prof Moyo said, “The problem with your lot is that you think what is said is correct or right depending on the political affiliation of who says it. That’s why all of your arguments are by political association.”

 

He continued saying, “Of course a lot has changed, a lot, and you know it. In the first place, your Chamisa has changed big time. He is not the same as the 2018 Chamisa whose rhetoric was about forging a broad-based movement and who was an MDC-A presidential candidate of different political parties that had their own leaders, and whose broad-based ranks even included Zanu PF elements some of whom were his parliamentary candidates, while others campaigned for him or mobilised funds for his campaign.”

 

Prof Moyo said that Chamisa himself has publicly said on numerous occasions that he is politically no longer what or who he was when I supported him between 2018 and 2021. He has repudiated all his pre-CCC affiliations, including his 2018 MDC-A, and the parliamentary and local authority candidates that were elected as MDC-A in 2018.

 

He asked tongue in cheek, “Is Chamisa the only one who is allowed to change? And is the proposition that when Chamisa changes, everyone else should agree with him and follow him wherever he is going, just because he would be claiming that God is showing him the way?”

 

He likened the thinking of Chamisa to the Jim Jones scenario of doomsday religion and said that it is not praxis politics, it is doomsday politics. Chamisa can have his ‘free doom’, as his political choice.

 

Describing the change in Chamisa in relation to CCC, Prof Moyo said, “Otherwise, it’s clear that the 2018 Chamisa has changed to the 2023 Chamisa, who now leads an opaque secret society called CCC, which has no ideology besides an oxymoron called strategic ambiguity, with no constitution, no policies, no structures, and no office bearers except four visible individuals: Chamisa himself, Mahere, Ostallos, and Chibaya who is just a runner with no voice.”

 

Turning to his change in criticism of ZANU PF, Prof Moyo explained his reasons while making reference to an apology letter he co-wrote with Patrick Zhuwao on 15 November 2022.

He said, “The indiscriminate collateral damage of my criticism of Zanu PF between November 2017 and circa mid-June 2021 was not only on Zanu PF members who had done me no wrong, but it was also on the nationalist project which is historically represented by Zanu PF – the one about the ethos, values, and legacy of the nationalist liberation struggle -a project to which I am inextricably connected and committed, ideologically and existentially.”

 

He said that his criticism lacked the necessary nuance, because it was bambazonke and thus indiscriminate in approach and, as a result, it had unintended collateral damage on Zanu PF members who had done him no wrong, and it also had unintended collateral damage on the nationalist project – which is historically connected with Zanu PF, the ZANU PF he admits to being inextricably tied, ideologically and existentially.