NGOs and CSOs operating within and outside the country’s borders have launched an onslaught on the ZANU PF leadership to save the struggling CCC from embarrassing defeat in the 2023 harmonised elections using a US$5 million kitty availed by Western countries a fortnight ago, information gathered by this publication reveals.

This comes as several surveys have indicated that CCC is headed for a mauling, with the latest Afrobarometer survey published on April 11 indicating that 83 percent of Zimbabweans will vote for a candidate whose policies they agree with, rather than candidates who give them gifts and money.

“Among Zimbabweans who say they may or will vote in 2023, policy preferences emerge as the most important factor affecting voter decisions, although a majority of citizens also say they favour candidates from their own province,” the survey noted.

ZANU PF recently held successful primary elections across all provinces to select candidates for the forthcoming elections.

The report goes on to state that those who lose elections should accept the results:

“More than eight in 10 citizens (81 percent) say that once an election is over, the losing side should accept defeat and co-operate with the Government to help it develop the country, rather than focus on holding it accountable.”

On August 1 2018, the MDC Alliance, then led by Nelson Chamisa who is now heading a breakaway faction, CCC, unleashed violence in Harare’s CBD, threatening to storm ZEC Command Centre after being mauled in the July 31 2018 harmonised elections.

The Second Republic has embarked on a massive economic development drive that has seen the country attaining food self-sufficiency, including record wheat production for the first time since 1965, among many infrastructure projects across the country using local resources.

These policies have resonated with the masses who are reeling under two decades of illegal economic sanctions sponsored by Western countries, the founders of CCC.

And it is their continued attempts to tarnish the country’s internal processes through funding of hostile elements to destabilise the country that remains a cause for concern.

Western countries, livid with CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, have laid a host of charges against their lieutenant, including his alleged failure to set up a team that is capable of unseating ZANU PF and present himself as a viable candidate.

Western Embassies in Harare, that are fast losing faith in Chamisa, are now turning to NGOs and CSOs for an alternative.

CCC’s Western funders have tasked their people in the so-called civil society with a mandate to take the lead in what they believe will be a ‘serious’ anti-ZANU PF campaign ahead of the elections.

The numerous NGOs and CSOs operating in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia and South Africa are banking on the US$5 million kitty to bolster the CCC faltering campaign.

Sources in the sector say the funds were disbursed under an initiative to ‘build consensus and gain collective strength around the need for non-violent political change’, meaning a drive ‘to ensure that Zimbabweans vote ZANU PF out of power’.

Ironically, members of CCC and persons aligned to that party have been at the forefront of fomenting a revolt against the Government via the social media as part of their plan to destabilise the country and discredit the elections.

The USAID, the usual suspects NED, Carnegie Empowerment for Peace as well as Council on Foreign Relations mobilised financial and material resources which amount to the said US$5 million to the NGOs and CSOs like ZESN, MISA, ZLHR and Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition who work hand-in-glove with the malicious NED have been mandated to campaign on behalf of the out-of-sorts CCC.

This, the sources said, was part of an ongoing broader plan by Western countries to interfere in the country’s electoral processes, using NGOs to halt enactment of the PVO Act.

The plan also involves manipulating the voter’s roll using Team Pachedu, a US-founded and funded outfit which claims to ‘protect’ the people’s vote and has been pestering ZEC to avail the same for unexplained reasons.

Zimbabweans can access their names on the voter’s roll by dialling *265#, something that Pachedu and their handlers continue to conveniently ignore.

To give their plan some semblance of credibility, characters like Chipo Dendere, Tawanda Chimhini and Pedzisayi Ruhanya, have been commissioned to write ‘academic’ papers that attack Government and ZANU PF so as to discredit the latter when it wins the 2023 elections.

This, however, as has happened with several other intrusive Western manoeuvres, is going to fail as Zimbabweans have since come to terms with the fact that any electoral contest in the country is a battle to preserve the legacy of the liberation struggle and the many benefits that have visited upon the masses since then or to obfuscate the same.

The fact remains that CCC and its numerous opposition appendages represent the interests of outsiders who detest the country’s unity, peace and development.

This is a matter that will, for the umpteenth time, be settled at the ballot.