In 2023, a Zimbabwean voter could queue for hours, mark a ballot for the Citizens Coalition for Change and send a representative to Parliament. A few weeks later, Sengezo Tshabangu could write a letter claiming that the representative no longer belonged to the party. The voter had done everything democracy asked. What had the party done to make sure that when somebody claimed authority to speak on its behalf, its own members could settle the question?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is the question I would put to the opposition leadership before asking Zimbabweans to rally behind another name or colour. The CCC had popular support. It had candidates capable of winning seats. What it lacked was a set of offices, records and procedures strong enough to settle a dispute over who could exercise power in its name. When Tshabangu presented himself as interim secretary general, those weaknesses became the voters\u2019 problem. People lost representatives they had chosen without ever being asked whether they wanted them gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ZANU PF would enjoy telling that story as proof that the opposition destroyed itself. That account leaves out Parliament\u2019s acceptance of the recalls, the court decisions that upheld them and the exclusion of some recalled candidates from the elections that followed. The ruling party gained seats through that process. A better organised CCC might still have lost in court. It would at least have been able to show its members who held office, when they were elected and what authority they possessed. That was within its own power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zimbabwe\u2019s opposition knows how to organise. Ahead of the constitutional referendum in 2000, trade unionists and civic organisers helped defeat a draft backed by Robert Mugabe\u2019s government. The union hall mattered because people already knew whom to call, where to meet and how to carry an argument back to a workplace. A person who disagreed could come back the following week and say so. That last detail matters. A movement that hopes to govern democratically must give its members somewhere to disagree with the leadership while the decisions can still be changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a different test of political maturity in the argument over the World Bank. In July 2026, the Bank revised its framework, separating its measure of organised political violence from its measure of institutional fragility. Zimbabwe appeared on neither new list. The government welcomed the result. Opposition politicians could acknowledge it and still point to the Bank\u2019s own September finding that nearly half the population lived below the international poverty line. Both findings deserve a hearing. Neither tells us that critics want Zimbabwe to fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What interests me more is what happens in a ward after that argument ends. Who helps a first time voter check the roll? Who keeps the minutes when a branch elects its officers? If a councillor is threatened, does somebody know whom to call? If the chair leaves, can the branch meet on Tuesday without waiting for instructions from Harare? These duties sound modest until the day a stranger writes to Parliament and claims to speak for everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zimbabweans who risked their livelihoods to organise against ZANU PF have earned more than a lecture about their shortcomings. They have also earned the right to demand better from their own leaders. Before anyone asks them to queue again, they deserve an answer to the question the recalls left behind. If we elect you, who will defend our vote when somebody tries to take our representative away? And can you show us, now, how that person gets chosen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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