CCC ditches Chamisa's face as it unveils new party logo

OPPOSITION Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party yesterday unveiled a new logo with the sun replacing its leader Nelson Chamisa's image in the old logo.

Chamisa formed the CCC party in January this year and presented yellow as the party's colour with a raised index finger as its symbol after MDC-T leader Douglas Mwonzora had claimed ownership of the MDC Alliance name and symbols.

Announcing the new party logo, Chamisa said it emphasised the party's position of putting citizens at the centre.

"The logo meaning …new, sunrise, hope, brilliance, balance, excellence, fresh, clean, clear, solid, love and oneness…Citizens at the centre," Chamisa said on Twitter.

In an interview with NewsDay, CCC deputy spokesperson Gift Siziba said the party had not abandoned the logo with Chamisa's image, and would use it for election purposes.

"We have not abandoned the old logo," Siziba said.

"Both logos are still important to us. It has been our political tradition and the policy of this country that a political movement must have an official logo for official correspondence. The official correspondence does not carry the face of an individual. For election purposes, we place the picture of our presidential candidate.  This is to avoid confusion and for clarity purposes in the ballot box. People will be able to identify their candidate of choice among, let us say over 20 candidates that may be on the ballot paper. It will be easy for voters to identify their leader. So for all our official correspondence, we use the logo with the sun and for election purposes we use the logo with the image."

People reacted to the new logo with mixed feelings. While others commended the party decision to keep the logo with Chamisa's face, others feared confusion among party supporters over the two logos.

Political analyst Rejoice Ngwenya said a single logo for a party showed consistency, adding that there was nothing wrong with the logo with an individual's face.

"Party logos are a brand, so they should reflect the nature and character of a political party," Ngwenya said.

"I am not sure whether there is any external pressure to abandon the first logo, but obviously it would be more professional to use only one logo for brand consistency. There are hundreds of ‘personalised' logos, for example that one for KFC (a fast-food brand). In this environment of political clutter, I see no problem at all with a ‘face' logo. Zanu-PF unleashes a proliferation of fake parties during elections, so brand integrity must be maintained at whatever cost."

Another analyst Rashweat Mukundu said: "The opposition has faced attacks on many fronts including on its names and images and the decision by CCC is informed by a need to widen options and not put its eggs in one basket. The use of Chamisa's face for elections is equally meant to minimise confusion among its supporters and address many copycats that are sure to crop up towards elections."