Zimbabwe’s leading opposition figure Nelson Chamisa drew thousands of cheering supporters on Sunday to his first political rally since forming a new party weeks ago, as the country gears up for elections that had been postponed due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n
Chamisa formed the Citizens Coalition for Change party in January, making a break from the country’s long-time opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old lawyer and pastor lost a disputed presidential election in 2018 to President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the country’s Constitutional Court threw out his challenge to the result.<\/p>\n
The courts later ruled that Chamisa was not the legitimate leader of the MDC, a decision that handed control of the party to rivals seen as close to Mnangagwa.<\/p>\n
Chamisa was no longer the leader of the MDC’s members of parliament and was not able to use the party’s headquarters or access state funding to the party.<\/p>\n
Many wore the new party’s yellow T-shirts and hats, abandoning the red colour associated with the MDC.<\/p>\n
Politically volatile Zimbabwe is to hold elections to fill more than 130 vacant parliamentary and council seats on March 26.<\/p>\n
The elections are largely viewed as a test for next year’s general election.<\/p>\n
While Chamisa’s party is new, the problems that have prevented the opposition from taking over power in Zimbabwe remain.<\/p>\n
These include arrests, detentions, beatings, harassment and alleged partisan security forces that act in favour of the ruling party.<\/p>\n
Chamisa on Sunday also repeated accusations that the country’s elections management body plans to rig the upcoming elections as it has allegedly done in the past.<\/p>\n
The body denies the allegations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwe’s leading opposition figure Nelson Chamisa drew thousands of cheering supporters on Sunday to his first political rally since forming a new party weeks ago, as the country gears up for elections that had been postponed due to COVID-19. Chamisa formed the Citizens Coalition for Change party in January, making a break from the country’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"AFP","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,30],"tags":[388,76],"class_list":["post-2186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-nelson-chamisa","tag-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}