According to a report on an online publication Bulawayo24, a CCC official who spoke to this reporter alleged that Chamisa regularly listens to telephone conversations of his senior party members as well as ZANU PF officials to get an edge over them as the elections approach.
According to the CCC official, recent victims of Chamisa’s electronic snooping include his interim co-deputies, Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube. The source added that Chamisa also gets access to private conversations of Thokozani Khupe, Thabitha Khumalo, Charlton Hwende, Fadzayi Mahere and many other CCC members. Most of these leaders were caught backbiting Chamisa in the surveillance videos and audio.
Investigations by this reporter revealed that Chamisa has recruited former Security Services members who were in telecommunications and information technology departments, to help him with these clandestine operations. A former surveillance expert with the Zimbabwe National Army, who has been based in a neighbouring country, recently told friends that he would soon join Chamisa’s electronic surveillance team.
Some members within CCC hinted that Chamisa could be getting assistance from Econet.
“Chamisa could be getting assistance from Econet to listen to people’s private conversations,” said a CCC official close to Chamisa. Econet could be hedging its risks by helping Chamisa in the hope that he could win and reward it.
An Econet senior employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the company had a good working relationship with Government and would not put its impeccable reputation at risk by engaging in illegal activities. He suggested that rogue pro-CCC employees within its ranks could be illegally providing the tapes to Chamisa for profit or for ideological/ political reasons.
The same official pointed out that a number of emerging CCC leaders had links with Econet because they benefitted from that company’s scholarship programmes that include the Joshua Nkomo Scholarship Fund, Capernaum Trust and Higher Life Foundation.
This reporter learnt that CCC’s emerging leaders were keen on exposing political and extra curricula activities of that party’s old guard as they seek to get closer to Chamisa and replace the old guard in the top leadership.
There is growing displeasure within the CCC top leadership as members are convinced that Chamisa was spying on them not for the good of the party but for the furtherance of his personal political gains. Chamisa got an appreciation of electronic surveillance when he was Minister of Information and Technology during the Inclusive Government.
