EXILED minister Walter Mzembi says the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has a good chance of winning the 2023 polls, but its leadership lacks the courage of the late opposition supremo Morgan Tsvangirai.
He, however, told NewsDay in an interview with the Alpha
Media Holdings editor-in-chief, Wisdom Mdzungairi, that Zanu PF will not
surrender power easily, and that the ruling party had “solid structures” to
mount an effective campaign ahead of the polls.
“Can they (CCC) win? Yes, they can… The ground for that to
happen is as fertile as it was in 2008, but they probably lack the courage of
Tsvangirai. He was not a lawyer and, therefore, his calculation of risk was
different,” Mzembi said.
“If you want to win a battle emphatically, you change
battleground like the eagle when it is preying on a snake, it picks it up,
spins it in the air where it has no balance. The current team love the courts,
but then again they are lawyers, yet they forget who is in charge of the
courts.”
The Nelson Chamisa-led CCC contested for the first in the
March 26 by-elections after its launch in January and won 19 of the contested
28 parliamentary seats. But Zanu PF retained its rural constituencies.
Analysts said the polls were a precursor to the 2023
elections.
A discipleship of lawyers in the executive can be a source
of paralysis, but then again you have got to love their temerity, branding and
unpredictability. On the other hand, Zanu PF, in my estimation, is based on
being battle-hardened, foxy and its mass mobilisation strategies often
dismissed as vote-buying, particularly in rural areas, will not go without a
real hard fight,” Mzembi added.
“Its presidential candidate may be older and less
appealing, but it has solid structures that outperform its rivals,
notwithstanding who leads.”
Mzembi also said the late President Robert Mugabe missed a
“Mandela” moment by staying in power too long until he was ousted in 2017.
“Mugabe had all the intelligence on the impending events,
but somehow he was in denial. He never imagined his liberation war colleagues
would take him out by force given their journey back in the struggle together
and how they had taken care of each other,” Mzembi said.
“On reflection, he also overstayed his welcome, and it’s a
lesson to us all on legacy management. You got to leave when people still want
you, but power is sweet, you really have to be a ‘Mandela’ to leave the stage
after one term!” Newsday
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