Open letter to President Emmesrson Mnangagwa

Good day, President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Your Excellency, as I see it, your Presidency does not deserve the honour and privilege inherent in the Chairmanship of the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc). It is a corrupted  version of a paragon of virtue. It reminds me of the message on a T-shirt that shouted, “I love my country but am embarrassed by my government,”

Methinks your Presidency has a deficit of constitutionalism. It is bereft of dignity, ethics, integrity and morality. It is destitute of accountability, equitibility, transparency, and, above all, empathy, the intuition for discerning the essence of people.

A Presidency with empathy does not assign chiefs to preside over the genocididal brutalities of the Gukurahundi atrocities. It does not unleash   dictatorial ferocity on the opposition, subjecting it to random rough and tumble arrests and lengthy pretrail detention periods.

Your Presidency cannot answer with affirmity to the question, “Which of you has not bartered your conscience for a bribe?”, which Oliver Cromwell asked when he stormed in to dissolve parliament in 1653, condemning the lawmakers collectively as peck of mercenary wretches.

It is not grounded in the rule of law. There could not have been the need for you to declare that you were serving your second and final term as President of Zimbabwe had it been authentic.

I reckon your governance failed to embody the time honoured principles of due diligence and equality before the law. Evidence abounds that you failed to embody the inclusiveness  spirit of inspired leadership. Granted, your Presidency is a corrupted version of a paragon of virtue.

It is fraught with a plethora of unfulfilled promises and unethical commissions. A Presidency that corrupts High Court Judges, ministers and parliamentarians with huge amounts of money has no claims to being a paragon of virtue, which is a standard of excellence and intergrity.

With the promises to name, shame and bring landbarons to account for their underhand practices yet to be honoured, so as your vow that the Fisrt Lady would be out of politics, your Presidency is indeed not bankable and worthy of belief, unless one is overly impressionable.

An equitable Presidency does not allocate government positions to family members and friends.

A Presidency that associates with the bred-in-the-bones corruption practitioners is inherently stripped of honesty and integrity. Moreso when it owes its parliamentary majority to multiple electoral chicanery that includes the recalls of opposition legislators.

Your Excellency, ever since your announcement that you were serving your final term as President of Zimbabwe and leader of ZANU PF, my voice was conspicuous by its silence amid the debate that ensued.

I did not participate in the discourse as ordinarily expected of me. I was clampdowned by an intervention, most probably for spiritual quietude, as was Zacharia, whose mutedness lasted until the birth of his son, John the Baptist.

A decisive insight implored me to get lost in meditation as a prerequisite for my contribution to the discourse. Amid my contemplation, promptings for a headline that would encourage the reader to a critical evaluation of your Presidency encamped around me.

It was compelling to yield to for the advisement of the powers beyond my oftentimes failing human faculties to emerge with the headline, “Your Presidency is a corrupted version of paragon of virtue.”  As I see it,  there hardly could be a single virtue that remains within your Presidency.

Your Excellency, the ancient wisdom of Robert Green Ingersoll, “The superior man rises by lifting others,” appealed to me as the epitome of the paragon of virtue. He brought to the fore the traits of a standard of excellence, empathy, compassion and lifting others up that is indeed the paragon of virtue.

Yet, your Presidency steps on the opposition for it to rise. It disregards the rights of citizenry. Their votes are annulled through collaboration with a political Easu who sold democracy for a mess of potage. It prioritises self-interest as opposed to lifting others up.

Speaking at Mutare Teachers Training college early this month, you remarked that you were serving your second and final term as President of Zimbabwe and that the National constitution and that of ZANU PF provide for a maximum of two terms.

Furthermore, you indicated the importance of abiding by the constitution and that succesion processes will commence in due course. Yet, given that your Presidency is a corrupted version of the paragon of virtue, it could not be taken as gospel truth that indeed, you would respect the constitution.

Yet, I remained distant from the discourse, only to emerge now, a month later. I reckon it could not have been by  happenstance that amid contemplation, I encountered the poem, Sailing  to Byzantine, by William Butler Yates, written in 1926.

It amazed me that the poem resonates with your leadership style, particularly the aspirations inherent in the the ED 2030 campaign sloganeering. Yet, Yates intimates that ageing does does not guarantee wisdom, dignity or value.

He maintains that an aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick. He rendered me an awakening to the folly of your 2030 campaign, given that you are already 81 years old. Yates poignantly explores the theme of human ageing and frailty and altimate decay.

I meditated on the poem, with particular attention to the description, a tattered coat upon a tree. It portrayed to me an age wearied body as being worn out, frail, fragile and stripped of its former vitality and purpose.

I concur with Yates that ageing does not only culminate in the depreciation of mental faculties, but also in bodily enfeeblement. It debiltates, beyond which probity discourages aspirations of clinging to power yonder prime time.

It is without thoughtful consideration that the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc) Chairmanship is to be bestowed on a Presidency that corrupts democracy. Like Judas, you betrayed virtue for corruption. You turned the Treasury to a den of thieves.

Your Excellency, your Presidency is a corrupted version of the paragon of virtue.

Notes about the author: Cyprian Muketiwa Ndawana is a public speaking coach,  motivational speaker, speechwriter and newspaper columnist.

By Cyprian Muketiwa Ndawana