Political Reporter

The Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) interim secretary general, Charlton Hwende has revealed that he was taking a sabbatical from party activities due to the toxic politics of that party’s supporters.

Writing on his Twitter handle yesterday, Hwende said that he had been self-funding CCC Mugwazo programmes and the reward he got were insults and threats from his party members. He added that his decision to actively withdraw from participating in CCC activities was also motivated by the need to protect his children from CCC toxic social media comments.

“Yesterday I addressed a ward meeting of CCC volunteers in Mhondoro. We prefer smaller meetings to counter victimization. This is probably my last meeting. I have noticed negative comments from our CCC citizens on Twitter whenever I go for Mugwazo in Mhondoro. I have also considered the stress and anguish which most of the comments cause to my teenage kids. The reason I agreed to help in Mhondoro was to assist in growing the rural vote. I did 38 weekend meetings this year funding myself and abandoning my work at my logistics company,” said Hwende.

Hwende added that he decided to use the festive season to self-introspect and analyse the damage caused by CCC members’ negative comments.

There are also reports that Hwende has fallen out of favour with Nelson Chamisa and there was already a plot to elbow him out of CCC before the 2023 elections.

A source who spoke to this publication said that CCC members aligned to Chamisa were the ones attacking Hwende as they believed that he belongs to a rival faction of the Maruva cabal that is opposed to Chamisa’s leadership.

However, self-exiled former Cabinet Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo said that what had befallen Hwende was because of the disorganisation within CCC.

“These are the wages of a structure -less and thus leaderless political party with no values, no ideology, no constitution and no policies. Such a political party is un-helpable and unsupportable. It is impossible for it to be a government in waiting. Never,” said Professor Moyo.

Meanwhile, some CCC members have advised Hwende to reconsider his decision and confront Chamisa head on instead of quitting. The same members said that Hwende should not be forced out of that party by the jonny come-lately whose only contribution to the opposition movement was to bootlick Chamisa.