Ashley Masakadza

The Deputy Spokesperson of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) Gift Ostallos Siziba has revealed that the opposition party will wait for the courts to deal with the matter involving the expulsion of 15 Members of Parliament and 17 Councilors by Sengenzo Tshabangu who he denounced as an “Imposter”.

Addressing journalists yesterday, Siziba said the opposition party made a resolution on its 18th National Assembly to pursue legal and peaceful means to reinstate the recalled office bearers. He said the party has filed a criminal case against Tshabangu for using the party’s intellectual property without approval.

“In our 18th Citizens National Assembly, we mandated president Nelson Chamisa to write to the speaker of parliament and inform the speaker, Honourable Mudenda that he acted in error and that the current person who wrote to him does not represent our movement.

“The speaker gave us a response that the issue has been subjected to the courts and we await the court processes that are happening.

Number two, we have as a movement, opened a criminal case against the imposter of Zanu PF, Sengezo Tshabangu because we cannot watch when there is criminal abuse of our intellectual property and the criminal abuse of our logo which ironically is the symbol of our movement which has the face of our president.

“But an imposter uses that letterhead to try and abuse our party and our property. That is why we have engaged the state, particularly the police. We continue to urge the Zimbabwe Republic Police to continue to take the necessary measures to make sure that such criminals and such criminal conducts are brought to book.

“We have made sure that the police are engaged for this act to be resolved because we are a law-abiding organization and we do not intend to take the law into our own hands to deal with the current criminality and gross abuse of our intellectual property,” said Siziba.

He urged CCC members and stakeholders to ignore messages coming from Tshabangu because he does not represent the party.

“Let me take this opportunity to put a general notice to all Zimbabweans, members of the media, change champions, state institutions, members of the region and international community; that any correspondence you receive coming from an imposter called Tshabangu does not reflect the position of CCC and any correspondence that might be sent either to government or media or our citizens calling for any action or program on behalf of CCC does not reflect and represent CCC. So, we are putting citizens on this general notice and all the stakeholders of our general movement,” he said.

This comes after rumors had circulated that the opposition party is planning to hold nationwide protests to push for the reinstatement of the expelled legislators and councilors.

Meanwhile, Siziba bemoaned the arrest of CCC members including Saka Handira and Job Sikhala, describing it as an attempt by the regime to silence authentic alternative voices in the country.