Nelson Chamisa has denied a social media claim that President Emmerson Mnangagwa paid him $64 million to destroy Zimbabwe’s opposition, saying he would never sell the country’s future for money.
The former Citizens Coalition for Change leader responded Sunday, Oct. 25, after an X user replied to one of his posts and asked whether he had been paid by Mnangagwa to kill the opposition. Chamisa answered with a question of his own. “Am I really that powerful,” he asked, to wreck the entire opposition, including the person who posted?
He went on to say he was not so cheap or morally bankrupt that he would swap a nation’s future for a little cash. Money, he said, has never been the thing that matters most to him. Legacy is. “I will not trade principle for profit,” he wrote, adding that money comes and goes while history remembers what a person stood for.
The post he was answering was a Sunday message on humility, in which he wrote that no position or power lasts forever. The Zambian Observer reported that some readers took it as a dig at Wicknell Chivayo, the ruling party ally who died in a helicopter crash Sept. 30. Others read it as a general reflection on politics. Chamisa did not name anyone.
The $64 million figure came from the question put to him. It refers to long-running claims online that he was paid to weaken the opposition after he left the Citizens Coalition for Change in January 2024. None of the reports reviewed offered evidence of any payment, and Chamisa has repeatedly denied taking money from ZANU-PF or the state.
The accusations trail a messy few years. Chamisa quit the coalition he led, saying the ruling party had infiltrated it. The party then fractured, and Sengezo Tshabangu, who calls himself interim secretary general, recalled opposition lawmakers and councillors. Chamisa announced his return to frontline politics on Jan. 23 with a citizens’ movement called Agenda 2026, rather than a conventional party.
He has fought off the same suspicion before. In June, he rejected claims that he had been co-opted by Mnangagwa, arguing that a government that really had him on its side would not be spending heavily to discredit him.
The backdrop is a weak and divided opposition. Critics accuse Mnangagwa of silencing rivals through a mix of coercion and financial muscle, and in July he approved constitutional changes that opponents say could extend his time in office. Reports available Monday showed no public response to Chamisa’s latest comments from Mnangagwa’s office or ZANU-PF.
The exchange drew mixed reactions online. Supporters praised the humility message, while critics used it to revisit how the opposition unraveled after the August 2023 general elections.
