Staff Reporter
Nelson Chamisa has cleverly crafted and perfected a new strategy, the Pie in the Sky Strategy. This strategy has enabled him, for now, to keep morale reasonably high in the CCC despite election losses, blunders and an impending split.
In 2018 when Chamisa lost the presidential election to President Mnangagwa, he claimed that he had been cheated of victory. He coined the phrase #GodIsInIt, in the process appealing to the Christian foundation of millions of Zimbabweans in his vain project. He claimed that President Mnangagwa would not finish his term. Chamisa’s gullible supporters cheered him on. The embarrassment of Chamisa was palpable as President Mnangagwa duly finished his term.
Following his loss in the August 2023 presidential election, Chamisa is seeking to hoodwink his followers into believing that he is still going to be present. He has moved away from his doctrine of strategic ambiguity and has now adopted the Pie In the Sky Strategy. With this ‘strategy’, Chamisa seeks to raise the morale of his supporters following the heart-rending loss to ZANU PF and the disintegration of the CCC.
The strategy seeks to keep his followers hopeful in the face of the political hopelessness starring his political project in the face. As usual, Chamisa is now waxing the hopelessness with a flair of religious dogma through the #GodIsInIt catch phrase. Chamisa kick-started the Pie in the Sky Strategy with the lie that he won the August 2023 presidential election, despite the glaring loss. After the official confirmation of his loss, he shifted goal posts and claimed that he had been cheated of victory. He claimed rigging by ZANU PF and ZEC. He told his gullible followers that he would challenge the poll results in Court. The Court challenge did not materialize.
Chamisa later claimed that he had engaged SADC leaders who would intervene and read the Riot Act to ZANU PF and President Mnangagwa. That again did not materialize. Instead, what we saw was the SADC Chairperson, Angolan President Joao Lourenco congratulating President Mnangagwa and Zimbabweans for the peaceful elections and victory. SADC Ambassadors accredited to Harare also trooped to State House to congratulate President Mnangagwa. All this did not dampen the spirits of Chamisa’s supporters as he gave them large doses of pies in the sky. He buttresses the strategy by resorting to quoting Bible verses and claiming that God is in his project and that he does not answer prayers instantly.
In pursuit of his trademark mass deception not to be outdone and to deflect looming irrelevance, Chamisa concotted another lie that the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) would intervene in the so-called electoral impasse in Zimbabwe. That, again, did not materialize. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, congratulated President Mnangagwa.
In a bid to contain the political carnage inflicted by CCC Secretary General, Sengezo Tshabangu, Chamisa claimed that Tshabangu was not a member of the CCC. Tshabangu was not deterred. He kept recalling the party’s Senators, MPs and Councillors. Shrill remarks by Gift Ostalos Siziba that the CCC had ring-fenced its legislators from further recalls proved to be part of the Pie in the Sky Strategy. To date, more than 20 MPs and Senators have been recalled.
Undeterred Chamisa is now claiming that the CCC faction will win the by-elections. All this is calculated to keep his gullible followers hopeful that he has a strategy to take ZANU PF head-on. He anticipates that such false hope would keep the CCC intact and his supporters expectant until 2028, with him as the unchallenged leader.
