Big Chamisa changes from Chamisa 2018

THEM: You, Jonso, after the November 2017 military coup, you were very critical of ZanuPF, and you were supporting Nelson Chamisa in 2018 and well after that.  What has changed now? Shame on you, flip-flopping chameleon. Nxaaa.

ME: 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.

So, what has changed, you ask. 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 ZanuPF elements some of whom were his parliamentary candidates, while others campaigned for him or mobilised funds for his campaign.

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.

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?

That kind of Jim Jones scenario is not praxis politics, it is doomsday politics. Chamisa can have his freedoom, as his political choice.

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.

These are big Chamisa changes from Chamisa 2018.

In the second place, and this is more important than the first place, the open letter of apology to Zanu-PF members that I co-wrote with Cde Patrick Zhuwao on 15 November 2022 and posted on this TL fully explains what has changed since 2018, especially from an ideological and praxis points of view.

With our November 2022 open letter to Zanu-PF members as the backdrop, my criticism of Zanu-PF from November 2017 to circa mid 2021 had a bambazonke effect of an indiscriminate collateral damage on Zanu-PF members - some of them my close relatives - who did me no wrong in November 2017 and others who in fact were among the Angels who ensured my safety and that of my family and my colleagues at a time of great danger to us in November 2017, when most if not all of those who are now asking me what has changed wished worse and even death upon us in November 2017.

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.

So, in a nutshell, my criticism of Zanu-PF between November 2017 and circa mid 2021 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 me no wrong, and it also had unintended collateral damage on the nationalist project - which is historically connected with Zanu-PF - to which I'm inextricably tied, ideologically and existentially.

That had to be corrected for posterity!