HARARE – Citizens Coalition for Change MPs are free to access US$40,000 “housing loans” from parliament, but they must repay them, the party said on Wednesday in an apparent climbdown after party leader Nelson Chamisa previously declared that they should not “drink from the poisoned chalice.”

Deputy CCC spokesman Gift Ostallos Siziba announced the compromise deal after appearing at a news conference with some of the MPs led by chief whip Prosper Mutseyami.

“There had been a misunderstanding over the loans,” Siziba said, “but the MPs have clarified that it was in fact they who led the push for housing loans and secured the concession in the supplementary budget in September. There can be no question of them not repaying the loans.”

Mutseyami told reporters that the loans “cannot bribe or derail our cause,” appearing to directly contradict Chamisa’s previously stated position that Mnangagwa was doling out the payments in a bid to capture the lawmakers.

Said Mutseyami: “The suggestion in some quarters that loans are donations is not correct. In the midterm supplementary budget of September 2022, provision was made for a housing or vehicle loan of US$40,000. This loan was understood as a genuine part of the MPs’ welfare.

“The loan is therefore not a surprise executive instrument but one that went through the due process of appropriation as is provided in the constitution. It is not a discretionary issue or an executive gratuitous gesture like the grants given to ministers and deputy ministers.”

The decision by the MPs to accept the loans has divided the party base and Chamisa did not help their cause when he publicly released a video accusing them of “jumping on the gravy train.”

Claiming that Mnangagwa was trying to “oil the palms” of Zanu PF MPs to avert what he described as “bhora musango” (protest vote) in next year’s elections, Chamisa said the largesse had to be extended to CCC MPs as a matter of procedure.

“But CCC were not supposed to drink from this poisoned chalice. They have joined the Pioneer Column, they have joined the gravy train, they have crossed the line,” Chamisa said, adding that any MPs who took the loans were going to be rejected by voters at next year’s elections.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s spokesman George Charamba said Wednesday that the disbursement of the loans was being done by alphabetic order.

He claimed CCC deputy leader Tendai Biti was first to get the disbursement as his surname places him top.

Charamba teased: “Did you know that by today, 100 MPs had been paid? Or that payment was by alphabetic order? Meaning the first to be paid was Biti Tendai. With Chikwinya Settlement (Mbizo MP) among the top 10 to be settled! Which explains why Biti was funerally quiet.”