FULL TEXT: Jonathan Moyo speaks on Chamisa's 11 September letter

A lot, in fact far too much of a lot, is being said and made about and expected from an unprecedented and manifestly improper and out of order letter that Nelson Chamisa sent on 11 September 2023 to the Speaker of the Parliament of Zimbabwe, purporting to direct the Speaker about how to handle any correspondence to Parliament regarding any CCC member who is also a Member of Parliament (MP).

Chamisa's letter to the Speaker is manifestly improper and out of order not least because, under the laws of Zimbabwe, there is no constitutional or statutory provision or standing order or rule of Parliament in terms of which any politician or leader of a political party out there can write to Parliament, through the Speaker, directing it on how to handle any correspondence regarding any of its members who are MPs.

In terms of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, Parliament is a self-regulating and a rule bound third branch of the state, which cannot and must not be directed by stranger on what to do or not to do about anything.

This position is in fact international best practice.

There is no politician anywhere else in the world, who can do what Chamisa sought and still seeks to do in his outrageous 11 September letter, and get it away with it.

Chamisa's 11 September letter demonstrates two telling things:

First, Chamisa has clearly lost control of "his" CCC, which he has been running like his personal tuckshop since 24 January 2022; and now he wants to use Parliament as his post office to enable him to regain control of "his" party, because it has no structures through which he can run it and control its processes. The fact that the letterhead of Chamisa's 11 September letter to the Speaker is marked "Office of the President", while he signs the letter not as "President", but as "Leader and Presidential Candidate", clearly shows confusion and is emblematic of the fact that Chamisa has become conflicted and insecure.

Second, the fact that Chamisa's 'loyalists' were chanting "11 September, 11 September, 11 September" on the floor of the National Assembly today, drowning the Speaker and disrupting the business of Parliament, shows quite clearly that in their confusion Chamisa and his lot want to be a law unto themselves: they want Chamisa's 11 September letter to have the force and effect of law, when in fact it is not even worth neither the paper nor the ink it is written on.

Consider this:

Here is a political formation [CCC] with no constitution – whose method of communication declared by Chamisa is ‘strategic ambiguity' [meaning confusionism] and which according to the same Chamisa operates in darkness [wapusa wapusa style] with no positions or officeholders – demanding that its leader's 11 September letter must be binding on the Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of Zimbabwe.  And there are some out there cheering this circus on, and touting it as a progressive and democratic alternative.

Honestly.

This alone is enough for anyone anywhere – who is right thinking and is serious minded – to understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with how Chamisa and his lot are doing things, how they want to be seen and how they see others!