MONDAY MESSAGE TO WEEVILS & MAGGOTS A FELLOW Zimbabwean, using the pseudonym Anon, sent an SMS to the pro-Grace Mugabe camp-controlled Chronicle newspaper last week: “Govt has forgotten to pay farmers who delivered their maize to GMB (Grain Marketing Board). The minister is quiet on the issue. Rains are by the corner. Are we serious about ZimAsset?” Indeed, nothing from nothing leaves nothing. We should now be looking at the real possibility of unauthorised and wasteful expenditure, and dereliction of duty by government. We can’t gold-plait unaccountability, however indirectly and remotely. Agriculture minister Joseph Made was seen at Grace Mugabe’s so-called Meet The People Tour rallies where there was a roll call with absent government and party officials promptly and publicly labelled disrespectful of the First Lady and part of Vice-President Joice Mujuru’s alleged cabal of plotters against President Robert Mugabe. Cowed ministers chose be at that circus than be at the service of the people they swore on the Bible to serve. In Made’s case, he ceded to the First Lady his duty to provide agricultural inputs to farmers. The previous week, while Mugabe was addressing a crowd at the Zanu PF headquarters that was baying for Mujuru’s blood for, among other accusations, alleged corruption, it was ironical that some of the people rubbing shoulders with the President on the podium were not exactly illustrious company. Close by was discredited failed musician Energy Mutodi, who is facing serious charges of defrauding poor, desperate home-seekers through his National Housing Development Trust. If Mugabe is that much against corruption, why keep such company? However, it is pleasing that some prominent Zanu PF politicians have refused to be caught in this chorusing against Mujuru. Cephas Msipa has come into his own, describing the rabid attacks on Mujuru as “unAfrican”. He correctly read the opposite effect of the virulence against the VP: “There are doing it with the hope that the public will turn against her, but that won’t happen (because) people abhor what they are seeing.” What they are doing is like scoring an own goal from the halfway line of the ground – all of 50 metres! To affirm this, African-American author Julius Lester in his book To Be A Slave published in 1968 writes: “The slave determined right and wrong very easily. Whatever the slave owner considered right, was wrong. Whatever he considered wrong, was right . . . From the laws and physical force that the slave owners used to maintain slavery, it is obvious that the slaves did not become puppets their owners would have liked.” For all we know, these accusations could die a very public death. Less and less Zimbabweans are buying the lies and exaggerations against Mujuru. Whatever the system says, the opposite is true. Those behind this failing campaign completely miss the point that it is not about supporting Mujuru against Grace Mugabe, but supporting fairness anywhere and everywhere in the world indiscriminately. If the First Lady herself were at the receiving end of these vicious attacks, people would come to her defence without hesitation. People are nobody’s dummy. For now, the First Lady is well advised not to speak until she is spoken to. As for the youths being used, they are nothing, but ignorant lackeys of the establishment. Reminds one of Pavlov. They have been conditioned to growl at the slightest mention of Mujuru. Talk of a bull enraged by dangling a mere red rag before it! Strangely enough, bulls are, in fact, colour-blind, and, therefore, the colour of the rag is irrelevant. It is generally accepted that bulls are enraged by the waving of the cloth rather than its colour. So are these hooligans enraged by the mere mention of Mujuru rather than any valid reasons behind that. You ask them to pinpoint what they are baying at Mujuru for, they will struggle for an answer except to say whatever is said against her is unquestionably true because it has come out of the mouth of the First Lady. That is how brainless this whole saga has been. Should the nation bow down to these forces of ignorance? Their relationship with their political masters is a perverted one. They see as their rescuers those very same people who have thrown them into dire poverty, who have ruined them, who still have to pay them from last season’s harvest. That’s how exploitable they are. These are the kinds of pathetic relationships that can exist when people are under mental bondage. They cede all their rights to the leadership and turn on each other. An example was when they abducted and bashed Zanu PF Mbare youth leader Jim Kunaka this week in the name of defending Dr Amai, leaving him hospitalised. Indeed, some of these “ever-obedient sons” are behaving worse than slave drivers, those “trusted” slaves who were willingly used by the white slave owners to enthusiastically carry out brutal and sadistic whippings on other black slaves for being out of line in 17th-19th century America. Continued Msipa: “Even senior people who are using youths to vilify (Mujuru) know that what they are doing is wrong and wouldn’t like it to be done to themselves, it’s all driven by selfishness.” Indeed, selfish people with an exaggerated notion of themselves have been unashamedly driving this madness. These people need to rekindle the human being that has been extinguished in them because of this frenzy for power and greed. Research has shown that people who believe they have power become less compassionate, less connected — and see others as a means to an end. They view themselves as above the law and adopt an all-wise mentality. That is exactly the tragedy of Zimbabwe where those at the very top — from their tone and actions — display all these characteristics or, more correctly, failings. That Mugabe had to say to war veterans’ leader Jabulani Sibanda: “Uri kuda kutanga hondo nemasoja angu? (You want to start war with MY OWN soldiers?)” for holding a different position on Mujuru shows a completely wrong, outdated notion of power, which has held back Zimbabwe from political and socio-economic advancement. Soldiers belong to the State, not to an individual, full stop.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 11:14:25 +0000
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