via I beg your pardon, Dr Grace – DailyNews Live 18 October 2014 by Kudzai Mbudzi
HARARE – Just as we all thought that Amai was going to do the logical thing and take a neutral political stance in Zanu PF’s factious situation, and shame the divisive elements within the party, she has the most grotesque surprise in store for us.
She goes gallivanting across the length and breath of the country, ranting and raving about some people’s alleged disloyalty towards her husband. One would have thought that is was the onus of the party leader injured by the so-called disloyalty to say it out himself.
But alas, there goes our lady, spitting a bitter concoction of threats, vitriol and caustic diatribes at adversaries, real and or imagined. Taking the opportunity at every turn to cast aspersions at shadows without let or hindrance.
I looked at the TV clip yaAmai yekuChinhoyi, Bulawayo and Mutare, and also attended her rally in Masvingo.
The common denominator of all her so-called “thank the people rallies” is kungopopotera vanhu vakuru veZanu PF — as if nyika ino yakavaresvera ivo nemhuri yavo.
She forgets that all of us have supported her husband for the past 37 years since 1977 when he was appointed or selected to be the president of the party, on the basis of respect for seniority in the party. (The same yardstick which Mutasa is propagating for today in the party’s election and selection of leaders.)
For 37 long years, the broad spectrum of Zanu PF members have shown President Mugabe individualised and undivided support.
For 37 years they have shown resolute and absolute loyalty; indeed in 37 years we have known no other leader other than her husband.
The generality of Zanu PF was solidly behind his programmes, political experiments, intimations, fears, anxieties and sided with him in any internal and external political battles for which he called for national support and comfort.
She forgets that appreciative reciprocation is good leadership; to equally support those of your own who previously supported you as well. Indeed, a good leader is one who equally submits himself to the leadership of other people.
Instead of all these rantings, Amai and her family should then know that it’s now time to reciprocate, showing one’s corresponding obligation to support the other in order to allow Zimbabwe to move forward.
But honestly, I am yet to know the sources of so much hatred, bitterness and frustration in her. I am yet to know what grievous mistakes or wrongs we have committed to the first family to deserve such open ridicule.
I felt so pitiful and so sorry for the largely revolutionary leadership of Masvingo when after innocently mobilising so many supporters to attend Amai’s rally, using their own personal resources, they only got such chiding and were labelled traitors, “vatengesi”, “vapanduki”, in front of their junior ranks by a novice pseudo politician who is still to fully comprehend the real reasons for Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle other than personal glory.
She insinuated that most of (Zanu PF) leaders, having been simply hand-picked by her husband, were therefore indebted to the first family.
How do senior party leaders become so philanthropically and patronisingly indebted to one leader in a revolutionary party whose membership is the broad spectrum of the people and descendency or ascendency is guided by a constitutional elective process?
How does the relationship between the same elected dear leader and the other comrades who elected him into power suddenly become that of an object and a subject, where the object has infinite powers and means to act willy nilly on his passive political subjects?
But on a more serious note, just where does Amai get the moral high ground from which to attack her perceived enemies in the party.
She imagines that political leaders appointed to positions in terms of the party’s constitution must forever be beholden to her husband as a matter of patronage.
No it’s not like that Amai! It is a matter of constitutional responsibility both on the part of the person who appoints and the person appointed and suggesting otherwise is either sheer unscholarly ignorance or condescension of the sickening type.
In any event, to the best of my knowledge, Amai does not hold any office in the party, elected or appointed. She is only waiting to be appointed.
And for sure, she will! But as we speak she is the proverbial ordinary card carrying member. She knows too well that she is going to get it all on a silver platter, just like they say she did with the degree.
In light of the above, I then wonder where a mere party cell member would derive all that power rokutuka (to shout at people), and discipline members of the party’s central committee or politburo.
I was equally appalled when she publicly stated that people like Shuvai Mahofa and Josiah Hungwe were her revered political mentors, while denigrating political luminaries such as Dzikamai Mavhaire, and by extrapolation, Dr Mai Joice Mujuru.
Lamentably unknown to Amai, both Mahofa and Hungwe do not command that much clout and favour in Masvingo. They are in their present positions for manipulative hidden agendas best known to the first family.
During the liberation struggle, I at one time happened to be the Zanla political commissar and instructor for all the Zanla bases in Maputo. I never witnessed a situation where Sally Mugabe rebuked general Tongogara, Mutasa — let alone any other ordinary member of the military wing on the basis of her familial relationship with the party president Robert Mugabe. Never, never, never!
Indeed history has lost memory, and therefore has no known sane person free from some form of a psychological disorder of schizophrenia, even in its mildest form of neurotic psychosis, where a simple card carrying member of an organisation without any substantive position, would perambulate and disdainfully move around the main organisational constituency scolding and purportedly disciplining the general membership and its top leadership by mere cushion of one’s conjugal relationship with the leader of the organisation.
But Amai, why are you trying to criminalise other members’ political ambitions? You need reminding of the existence of a section in the constitution on the rights of members and therefore that we are all equal members of the party and as such, there is nothing wrong in one wanting to occupy any position within the party, including that of the president.
But alas, Amai speaks as if we are not allowed to be ambitious in our own right as long as her family still exists. This notion that it just has to be her own family alone taking centre stage and no one else, is not only a lamentable exposition of one’s feeble mind, but a serious and perilous misdirected fantasy, embedded in thinking political naivety and mischief.
She speaks as if we live for her: as if all party members are supposed to live to the service of the first family, or as if we are all slaves of the first family.
After all these years of, and in the struggle, why should a political luminary such as Mutasa’s political fate suddenly be in limbo simply because at his advanced age, he wants to finally fulfil his last political aspiration of being the chairman of the party which Amai might not approve of?
I am not sure where this confusion is emanating from maybe from mix-up formulas in one of the quantitative Chinese modules, as to any other normal person, it does not add up that if Mutasa aspires and then goes on to burn the midnight candle to be Zanu PF chairman, then he is automatically plotting against Mugabe.
How do you plot against a 91-year-old who supposedly is simply scripting some conclusive remarks to his political career?
Amai must also have the wisdom to know that zera remurume wavo harisiri rekutukira vanhu. Aging is a grace from the Almighty and is a natural process quite independent of anybody’s will, hence not instigated by midnight candle burners or any faction within the party.
Indeed, is this really my beloved Zanu PF where each member is supposed to have equal rights equal chances and enjoy equal opportunities?
Amai should be better enlightened that Zimbabwe did not go to the liberation struggle to just please the political enchantments and aggrandisement of the heart of the first family.
In good protocol, normally callow minded people should never be allowed to be near a public address system without a written script in their left hand, lest they embarrass themselves and all those innocent souls who might have been tempted and cheated into believing their wild claims of possessing eternal enormous political muscle power. And sometimes you have to forgive the all too obvious delusions of grandeur.
Knowing my dear leader Bob as much as I do, he should never have allowed this embarrassment to his own personal and private family, thereby exposing his own family to political ridicule for a very long time to come; even well after he is gone.
Truly, Amai should be wise enough to know that Bob will not be in that position in the not too distant future – obviously owing to his age.
Certainly, without the shield of his power, she would not withstand any political contestation with all these guys whom she today is arrogantly denigrating and parading as traitors and political quislings.
Amai by the look of things, seems to me to be too individualistic, immature, “vane bapu”, is uncalculative and purely opportunistic, and rather poor in mental construction of reality.
Dr Mai Joice Mujuru is her direct opposite: who is cool, calm, reserved, tolerant, objective and intelligently calculative of what is good or bad for Zimbabwe.
No wonder political crooks want her out sooner than later. She will not in the not too distant future, tolerate their crooked ways.
There is no person as dangerous as the one who overestimates one’s own capacities, abilities and intelligence. The worst stature of primitive foolishness is inability to adjust one’s own behaviour through the eyes of the whole world in which one frequents.
This naivety even leads people not to feel uncomfortable and unashamed in gracefully accepting such pseudo accolades with a cunningly deceptive humility, without any dissonance and some inner psychological discomfort which such a biblical Delilah act should automatically trigger to an average human being.
People like Oppah Muchinguri of the “chetechete” stable should better be reminded that Zimbabwe is not looking for a supervisor of a government departmental typing pool here: we are looking for transformational leadership to propel and catapult the country into an orbit of sustainable competitiveness and economic prosperity after these long periods of the current economic lost decade.
I was equally appalled to see some haggard and sullen faced chiefs trying to bestow the heroic Mbuya Nehanda status on a person who does not even embrace the political value-consensus of the ethos and objectives for the first and second chimurenga liberation struggles.
They should be reminded that Amai is but just an opportunistic admirer of the fruits of the liberation struggle which have suddenly become so abundant to her after a miserable life in a government typing pool.
It was a lamentable lack of social intelligence for chiefs then to urge Amai to aim higher than her most suited current position of a house wife, a position she has thus far proven very capable in.
By such a much vibed and forceful entry into Zimbabwe’s political landscape, I do not know what gap she says she is trying to fill or what problems she purports to be trying to solve in the politico-economic landscape of the current Zimbabwe.
I am not sure also how homeboy Ngwena will benefit with anticipated fall of Dr Mai. To me, Ngwena is better off with Dr Mai than to surreptitiously try to manoeuvre from Amai’s corner.
Ngwena and Dr Mai can actually work out a working relationship where one becomes the president and the other the prime minister or president and deputy, and we members of the party will proudly participate in free and fair primaries supervised by our current president to decide who becomes what.
This will totally unravel the succession trap strategy being bedded by the incumbency.
As far as I am concerned, Dr Mai and Ngwena should refuse to be used. They have shown undivided and individualised support for the incumbency for the past 37 years.
Ngwena should not expect to benefit by way of the fringe benefits that will be created with the anticipated fall of Dr Mai Mujuru.
But the main causative factors to current problems in my party can be attributed to a defective Zanu PF constitution which totally surrenders the whole country to one man at the expense of an otherwise good constitution which should uphold the right of individuals to aspire and also to be motivated by personal interest for power.
It must otherwise clearly legalise an open contestation for political power within the party which currently is being criminalised by Amai.
One of the greatest political think tanks ever to be associated with Zanu PF, Edison Zvobgo, once pointed out that in public and mass organisations such as Zanu PF, one should be able to look at the calendar and be able say,”on such and such a date, that guy is going”.
As I am about to blow off the midnight candle in concluding this article, I felt I should get divine salvation. I decided to get more spiritual guidance from a verse in Leviticus which proclaimed to me that “chinouraisa vanhuvangu kushayazivo”.
As I planted an antagonistic glare into space wondering how such a maritime prophesy, tens of thousands of years ago can still be so strongly – spiritually apt and predictive in our current era of errors, I suddenly found myself mining a popular Reformed Church hym “nha..aa..mbodziii…..nongo..siyeeenda; zu.va; mwe…dzi; go..re; pasi pa…no tinowooo …shaiwa ….”
*Retired Lt. Colonel Mbudzi is a former Zanla combatant, former Zanu PF provincial spokesperson for Masvingo and has recently submitted his final fourth year PhD in Business Administration degree report at the National University of Science and Technology (Nust).
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