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Once again the main opposition movement or movements in Zimbabwe are rocked with internal power struggles and splits, with Parliamentarians being recalled, and leaders firing each other with zero support or backing from the non-existent structures.

The latest round of allegations involves a lot more than just internal disorganisation with allegations being made that foreign money is being sent to CCC for purely political purposes, more than US$9 million according to the interim secretary general Sengezo Tshabangu, and that is potentially a crime that at least needs investigation.

The internal struggle, apparently being waged by Mr Tshabangu and another led by Mr Nelson Chamisa, the CCC presidential candidate in the last two elections, is depressingly familiar and a major headache for those in Parliament who have to administer the law of Zimbabwe.

There is provision in law for a party to recall a member of the House of Assembly or the Senate who was elected under that political party’s name and support. 

This recognises that almost all Parliamentarians rely very strongly on their party nomination and affiliation to win their seat, voters tending to back a party rather than a candidate.

The odd independent, or de facto independent if they are the nominee of a tiny “mom and pop” party, has been elected in the past, and the law makes it clear that they can join any party they like and even cross and re-cross the floor as often as they like. 

They were elected as an individual. But those on party lists, and those who fairly obviously won because of their party affiliation, have to remain in the good books of their party or face a by-election after their seat has been declared vacant. 

If they were right and it was their personal attributes that won them the seat, with their party nomination just being icing on the cake, then they will win the by-election. That does not often happen showing that for all practical purposes the party nomination is critical.

Legal challenges after the 2018 elections found that the MDC-Alliance, which had sponsored most of the winning opposition MPs, was not a legal entity in itself, being rather an electoral alliance of a number of parties with the MDC-T as the largest. 

There was no corporate structure for the MDC-A. An appeal was lodged, but when the Supreme Court was ready to hear it, no one from the MDC-A turned up, so the original High Court judgment was confirmed.

Previous challenges had established that Mr Chamisa’s assumption of the MDC-T leadership had not followed the MDC-T constitution, and as the MDC-T was a legal body corporate it could successfully sue for a court order that it called a congress under its own rules, not anyone else’s rules. 

In fact the party did so in the end, and the party did fight the last election and was almost wiped out.

Meanwhile, Mr Chamisa and leaders of the other groups and parties that had formed the MDC-A then formed the CCC, but again did not to create any structures. 

They gave each other positions in the movement, but there are legally no members whatsoever, so no membership lists and no mechanisms for confirming or changing the leadership. They are just there, self-appointed, and now busy firing each other.

So when the person identifying himself as the head of the CCC administration writes to the Speaker of the House of Assembly to say that the CCC has lost confidence in 15 of its MPs, the Speaker had little option, but to accept that as the official view of the CCC and declare the seats vacant under the law. 

No doubt we will see some legal challenges, with the whole mess dumped in the lap of a High Court judge. But it does make life difficult for everyone else.

The other main problem that has arisen in the movement is Mr Tshabangu’s attack on Mr Chamisa himself, and his purported dismissal as party leader, is the finances of the party.

Mr Tshabangu accuses Mr Chamisa, and perhaps unnamed others, of receiving money from other countries and making this money disappear without any accounting.

There have been other reports that money has been channelled to the CCC by foreign persons, Governments and entities, and that is illegal under Zimbabwean law. 

It has not been tested in a court, whether it is legal for a Zimbabwean citizen living in a foreign country to send money to a political party.

Investigation is needed to see if either the ban on foreign financing or the ban on being a money laundry or both has been broken.

Some of the alleged missing foreign money might well be legal, although not if it was channelled through the CCC, and that is the payment of legal bills for CCC leaders and supporters before the courts. 

It is legal for anyone to pay legal bills direct to a lawyer, and lawyers have to be able to account for this money to both the law society and Zimra so they at least will have decent accounts and be very careful not to break any laws.

The gossip in Zimbabwe is that even Governments have been paying legal bills, and again that can be checked out easily through bank records and accepted as totally legal if the payments were to the lawyers at the prescribed hourly rates and anything over was held in the lawyer’s trust fund for refund or future use. 

There are also rumours, reports and gossip that some of the foreign funders are extremely unhappy about the lack of accounting by the CCC of the money they paid, and would welcome a change in leadership, or at least the creation of a different sort of structure that would also include some serious accounting. 

If they start interfering in how the CCC is formed, that again would breach Zimbabwean law although if the CCC itself set up a proper structure and made it clear how decision making was to be done that would be not only legal, but would also make life easier, for people like the Speaker of the National Assembly and head of Parliament when they have to make decisions on who should communicate with                        them.

Such a structure would also make it clear what sort of party the CCC was. 

There are questions on whether the CCC copied the old National Socialist German Workers Party of the years between the world wars and said its leader had total and absolute dictatorial power as the Fuhrer. At least we would all know where they were.

One of the results of the mess that the amorphous opposition creates with everyone wandering around and firing everyone else is that a lot of people lack representation for considerable periods while legal disputes are sorted out and while the authorities after studying the Constitution and Electoral Act have to make decisions on whether to call by-elections or invite the party that held a party-list seat to nominate a replacement.