Jacob Zuma’s Unforgivable Sin

Jacob Zuma’s Unforgivable Sin Tsanga Tutankhamen Shanga It is said you really get to know how a person truly feels about when anger makes that person lose guard and blinding hatred loosens his or her tongue. In the immediate aftermath of the summit of the SACD troika in which Robert Mugabe was reminded that keeping a promise is honourable and honesty shows respect for others, all hell broke loose. It was Robert Mugabe himself who raised Cain from the dead and his ZANU-PF subordinates immediately followed suit. The primary target of that fury was you, President Jacob Zuma. Of course ZANU-PF is very contemptuous of the South African president. The kind of verbal abuse and even threats of violence unleashed since the momentous meeting in Livingstone (Zambia) can hardly have been said in the spur of the moment. Anger made ZANU-PF lose the plot and its guard to betray the disdain with which you, Jacob Zuma, are held with that party. If you, President Zuma, did not know it prior to the full-throttle verbal abuse by ZANU-PF, you must not have any doubt now ZANU-PF harbours a deeply seated animus against you and the ANC. As a matter of fact, ZANU-PF and the ANC have never been the most comfortable of partners even during the struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively. Now all pretense of kinship has been dropped. That kinship was always a humpty dumpty precariously seated on a wall. Straight from Zambia, Mugabe gave his wrecking crew the signal to push that humpty dumpty. He had to know that within that crowd is a certain chameleon trapped in a human body that will do anything to please him as atonement for previously organizing the failed Tsholotsho putsch. The Tsholotsho reptile is a one-man wrecking crew. As the smartest and most articulate character in ZANU-PF after Mugabe himself, the de facto ZANU-PF spokesman pushed the fragile humpty-dumpty-like brotherhood between ZANU-PF and the ANC. That humpty dumpty is shattered. Robert Mugabe and his official spokesman are frenetically trying to piece it together but there is no putting the humpty dumpty back together. The truth is out. It always has a sinister way of getting out - rine manyanga hari putirwe, as the Shona proverbs states. The game of ZANU-PF deceit is over. The ancients said that that which comes first out of a man’s mouth is the truth, and that which comes out later is only meant to deceive. ZANU-PF is busy telling you that they did not mean to insult you. If they really mean it, how come they have yet to say they are sorry for the indignities and insolence they have publicly heaped on you? Even if they say they are sorry, there are insincere. Watch what they do but listen not to what they say. Do not expect a public apology despite the public humiliation you have suffered at the hands of ZANU-PF. The reason you will not get an apology from ZANU-PF is very simple. You see, Mr Zuma, you committed a cardinal sin against the gods. In their own eyes, the people who run ZANU-PF think of themselves immortal gods. Human beings apologize to gods but not the other way round. Gods are above such acts like observing basic tenets and stricture of Ubuntu. Laws are made to be obeyed by mere mortals. These gods are above these temporal laws, which they flaunt with impunity. Going against them, like you and Rupiah Banda did in Livingstone, is not considered an offense a crime. No, it is worse than that. It is a sin, a sacrilege for which you must pay the heavy penalty of a public flogging like a petty criminal at the hands of a vigilante mob. ZANU-PF is not a political organization as far as the people who run it are concerned. It is a pantheon, a veritable House of Gods. God do not take marching orders from mere mortals. To ZANU-PF gods, you and Rupiah Banda, that other upstart north of the Zambezi River, are mere mortals. Yet there you were issuing directives to gods. How dare you? Now you know what the Zimbabwean people have had to endure for the past 31 years. We know these strange gods. As far as they are concerned, they are never at fault. They can go to Matebeleland and Midlands to slaughter 20000, as what happened to the Amalekites, and simply brush off the pogrom as a divine act carried out in a moment of holy fury. We know these gods. They act like they truly believe they are a consuming fire. They can run a robust economy into the ground but they are always blameless. Someone else has to be responsible for that. Incompetence? Not a problem! They can say the vilest words. Insolence? They can snatch food from the jaws of hungry children. Lack of decency? Not a problem! Gods do not suffer from these human frailties. These gods think they are immortal. They openly declare that the god of gods will rule forever like a Biblical Melchizedek that has neither a beginning nor an end. Douglas Mwonzora stupidly wanted to know if the god of gods was well but now he will be dragged to court in chains for offending the god of gods. That just shows you that these gods are hard to please. Like your predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, your duty is to pay obeisance to these gods as well as quietly do their bidding like defending them when they come under attack from gods that are far superior compared to them. Like Joseph Kabila discovered when he had to wait for a day to meet Robert Mugabe, you were expected to bend over backwards so that the god of gods, Robert Mugabe, could make a political wife out of you like he did with the Thabo Mbeki and, numerous local and regional leaders. Mr Zuma, you may recall an incident in 2008 just after the election and the gods unleashed their consuming fury on the Zimbabwean people. Asked what he was going to do to stop the grisly murders by the agents of the gods, Mr Mbeki said there was no problem in Zimbabwe to warrant concern on his part. The rest of the world was aghast at the apparent insensitivity. Zimbabweans were not. We knew what had happened to the son of Govan Mbeki. The generality of the Zimbabwean people came to view poor Thabo as a hopelessly effeminate political eunuch in Robert Mugabe’s political harem. Thabo Mbeki’s words in defense of the indefensible roguery of Mugabe’s agents rang hollow just as the words spoken by an abused wife in defense of her abusive husband despite an obvious swollen face after a beating. If Zimbabweans are cheerful today that joy comes from a simple fact that. It seems that at long last, in Rupiah Banda and you, Robert Mugabe has run into proud African men who will not permit ZANU-PF to politically vasectomization you so that you can be politically sodomized by Mugabe while his minions cheer him on. They are still trying to neuter you right now. They are sure you will buckle under pressure so they can do with you as they please. After you instructed ZANU-PF to cease and desist, but Mugabe’s thugs have not stopped. Poor parishioners, children and the elderly among them, were mercilessly gassed in a church one week after your ordered ZANU-PF from such dastardly acts. A party activist was abducted during the inhumane gassing of the House of God. A member of the majority party was charged for something as ludicrous as asking a benign question regarding Robert Mugabe’s wellbeing. The police commissioner, a sycophant of Robert Mugabe, initially threatened to arrest your emissaries in retaliation for your refusal to get vasectomized. When they arrive in Harare to monitor the signatories of the agreement brokered by you government, you emissaries were barred from the discussions. They were forced to retreated back with their tails between their legs. That was clearly meant to humiliate you. ZANU-PF is directly challenging you straight in your face. You will never be forgiven by ZANU-PF so you might as well quit trying to pacify them. For refusing to sacrifice your dignity on the altar of the god of the gods of ZANU-PF, you, Jacob Zuma, have been called a man not in control of anything in South Africa. You need to lose sleep over that accusation from ZANU-PF, a party that has presided over the complete destruction of Zimbabwe. If you were not restrained by your African tradition, you would publicly remind ZANU-PF that the proof of Mugabe’s failure to run anything productive is provided by hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans living in South Africa. Zimbabweans know that but we are sorry nobody bothered to warn you ahead of time. It is unfortunate that you were stricken by the snake Thabo Mbeki rescued from drowning. A rescued snake knows no gratitude. Its first act once it is safe is to strike its rescuer. Of course Mugabe and his ZANU-PF team of sycophants and bottom feeders are not gods. They are actually the sorriest excuse for humanity for they have no sense of shame. You do not have to be bullied into a political eunuch by these clowns. Audaciously ZANU-PF made a subtle dig at your lack of university degrees. The Sunday Mail, which is controlled by ZANU-PF, is accusing you of being illiterate. You did not read the report put together before the troika meeting, charges the ZANU-PF propaganda rag. May be someone needs to remind ZANU-PF that Robert Mugabe has a whole raft of degrees but he has very little good to show for this degrees. Simply because a person has a degree does not mean he is educated. Mugabe is ample proof of that. As a result of being daft, little good has come out of his raft of degrees. Someone in South Africa needs to remind Robert Mugabe’s boys that the only degree that Mugabe has put to use is the degree in violence he claims to have. For that reason, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have flocked to South Africa. On the contrary, you, Jacob Zuma may not have degrees like Robert Mugabe but you are educated on issues that matter the most to the people you leads. You use common sense. Jacob Zuma is a liability to Africa, charges ZANU-PF. That charge is a joke that could make a goat laugh. Perhaps you need to remind Mugabe’s boys that he has actually done more damage to the image of Africa. The justification for colonialism was always predicated on the basic premise that Africans were not really mentally mature to be responsible for their own wellbeing. Educating an African was as good as training a dog to carry out amusing tricks but, at the end, it would always be a dog, so went the argument used to degrade Africans. Now Africa’s detractors can point out what Mugabe and his numerous degrees have done to Zimbabwe as proof. Lastly, Mr Zuma, if you ever visit Zimbabwe, you must make sure you bring your own bottled water. Also make sure you have sentinels watching that water all the time lest it be tempered with. African tradition says you cannot turn down food when your host offers but you must remember that these ZANU-PF creatures are not Africans at all. Besides, African tradition does not encourage you to knowingly walk into a deathtrap and expect benevolent ancestral spirits to rescue you from malevolent gods.

They Are Not White Farmers

by T. Tut Tsanga, 31st December 2008 Two years ago, I ran into a new black farmer who had acquired a farm famous for producing huge groundnuts, mazambani. I wanted to know if this new farmer was still growing the famous groundnuts. "No," he said. "I don't. We now grow flowers that we export to Europe. Eeh, how did you know that farm?" “I did not know you are now growing flowers on that farm,” I said without bothering to answer his question. It was startling. “Why flowers?” “My friend, they can’t eat flowers. The labourers are thieves. If I grow groundnuts and other edible crops like maize, the labourers will steal the crops to feed their families. Listen,” he said as he realized that I had been stunned speechless, “I am running a business not a charity.” I knew the farm. The black farmer bought the farm from the commercial farmer with assistance from a government minister. One of my great grandmothers, an immigrant from Malawi, and my great grandfather, a Shona from Murehwa, met while working on a farm adjacent to the farm Mugabe’s black farmer now owned. Inevitably we had a lot of relatives who worked as farm labourers and my grandmother used to take me along whenever she visited our relatives. The visits were memorable. We had beans, salted and dried bakayawo fish, cultured milk, sugar, you name it. The “white” farmer was not an angel but he was kind enough to give his labourers food. Contrast that with his “black” successor who now grows flowers while his labourers starve. Since the labourers’ children cannot eat flowers, the poor kids have to hunt for crickets and wild fruits to survive. That is Mugabe’s land policy right there. It is a failure and people, the inordinate majority of them black, are going to starve. Just like the heartless flower grower put it, they can’t eat flowers. Children digging up crickets and gathering wild fruits is what passes for black empowerment in ZANU-PF. It is this revolution that has to be guarded, says Robert Mugabe. Inevitably, I wanted to know if most of the farm workers were still under the employment of the new farmer. “Manyasarande aye takaatandanisa! – We got rid of all the Nyasalanders!” he chortled as he congratulated himself for dismissing the labourers he had inherited from the white farmer. Mugabe’s black farmer had deeply seated contempt for the black workers. To him, they were Malawian interlopers hence the use of the profoundly derogatory Manyasarande colonial-era epithet. Munyasarande is a loaded noun. It captures a terrible stereotype of someone who is a permanent alien, a person incapable of assimilation into a new cultural environment and, therefore, irredeemably and hopelessly uncultured. The original immigrants are all dead and all their descendants are Zimbabwean, any which way you look at it. However, to this ignoramus Mugabe farmer, the "Nyasarande" traits are heritable like Adam’s sin. I was furious. I have relatives of Malawian extraction who are some of the most patriotic, honest, God-loving and ethically enterprising Zimbabweans. They have never been to Malawi and yet Mugabe’s goofball was dismissing them as gypsies. For all of Mugabe’s endless incantations about African Solutions for African Problems, the attitude of this beneficiary of the ZANU-PF’s catastrophic land program had no iota of sympathy for a fellow black African. Some will say I should have known that Mugabe’s cronies are as insincere as the man himself. You will have to excuse my French, folks, I was pissed off big time! The black farmer’s supremacist attitude encapsulates the mentality of the circle of lunatics that surrounds Mugabe. They are shameless bearers of false witness and will blatantly lie if it gives them political and material mileage. The ZANU-PF farmer's xenophobic characterization of the farm labourers fits the ZANU-PF modus operandi. Like Munyaradzi Wasosa put it, when a leopard wants to eat its children it starts by accusing them of smelling like goats. If anyone stands in the way of the Mugabe crime syndicate, nothing will keep the supposed offender from a torrent of invective and, increasingly, abductions, torture and gruesome death. That is how the Stalinist-Maoists in ZANU-PF operate. It comes straight from the playbook of Joe Stalin whereby you dehumanize and demonize your victims first and then rob them of their property and lives thereafter. When ZANU-PF wants to give commercial farms as gifts or bribes to placate disgruntled party followers, Zimbabwean commercial farmers are attacked as white farmers, a charge which is equivalent to calling the farmers unrepentant racists. How can all the farmers who used to produce enough food to feed the entire region be racists? Incredibly, the same land is now owned by Mugabe’s cronies, most of whom had never even cultivated a backyard garden of vegetables before receiving the farms as payment for loyalty to Mugabe’s revolution. It is widely believed that some of these new farmers keep the farms so they can get subsidized fuel, seeds and fertilizer that are then sold on the black market. Farming requires constant and monomaniacal attention. I have to wonder where someone like Samuel Mumbengegwi gets the time to be both a viable commercial farmer and a minister, even in a completely dysfunctional government. The truth of the matter is that it is not just the commercial farmers that have been demonized by the ZANU-PF Mafia. “Puppets and prostitutes!” shouts Mugabe when blacks object to his disasterous policies; When Justin Mukoko decided to go and catalogue acts of terrorism and theft of food aid perpetrated by ZANU-PF, she got charged with terrorism with the possibility of get hanged if convicted in Mugabe’s kangaroo court. What the colonialists did to Nehanda Nyakasikana, the ZANU-PF nationalists want to do to Justina Mukoko. People born and bred in Zimbabwe are quickly labelled foreigners / Manyasarande they pointed out refuse to vote for the continuance of Mugabe’s ineptitude running of the country. The irony of it all is that there are some rumours, which are silly in my opinion, to the effect that Mugabe himself has Malawian / Nyasarande blood flowing in his veins. What we know is that one of his nephews, Patrick Zhuwao, definitely has a Chikunda name. Zhuwao is an indigenized Portuguese name Joao. Comrade Mugabe may profess to hate the British but he seems to like aping them at every opportunity. He tries to speak English like a Britisher. When it comes to dividing and conquering, the man learnt a lot from his colonial masters. Criminals in ZANU-PF may have arrogated to themselves the right to determine who is and who is not Zimbabwean but we do not have to ape them. We need to renounce ZANU-PF’s xenophobic lexicon once and for all. There are no white farmers, there are no Manyasarande, there are no Mandevere and there are no Maindiya. Their forebears might have come to present-day Zimbabwe from different parts of the world and at different times but that must not be the defining character to their citizenship. These are Zimbabweans, pure and simple. Anyone who insists otherwise must be considered a criminal.

They Are Not White Farmers

31st December 2008 Two years ago, I ran into a new black farmer who had acquired a farm famous for producing huge groundnuts, mazambani. I wanted to know if this new farmer was still growing the famous groundnuts. "No," he said. "I don't. We now grow flowers that we export to Europe. Eeh, how did you know that farm?" “I did not know you are now growing flowers on that farm,” I said without bothering to answer his question. It was startling. “Why flowers?” “My friend, they can’t eat flowers. The labourers are thieves. If I grow groundnuts and other edible crops like maize, the labourers will steal the crops to feed their families. Listen,” he said as he realized that I had been stunned speechless, “I am running a business not a charity.” I knew the farm. The black farmer bought the farm from the commercial farmer with assistance from a government minister. One of my great grandmothers, an immigrant from Malawi, and my great grandfather, a Shona from Murehwa, met while working on a farm adjacent to the farm Mugabe’s black farmer now owned. Inevitably we had a lot of relatives who worked as farm labourers and my grandmother used to take me along whenever she visited our relatives. The visits were memorable. We had beans, salted and dried bakayawo fish, cultured milk, sugar, you name it. The “white” farmer was not an angel but he was kind enough to give his labourers food. Contrast that with his “black” successor who now grows flowers while his labourers starve. Since the labourers’ children cannot eat flowers, the poor kids have to hunt for crickets and wild fruits to survive. That is Mugabe’s land policy right there. It is a failure and people, the inordinate majority of them black, are going to starve. Just like the heartless flower grower put it, they can’t eat flowers. Children digging up crickets and gathering wild fruits is what passes for black empowerment in ZANU-PF. It is this revolution that has to be guarded, says Robert Mugabe. Inevitably, I wanted to know if most of the farm workers were still under the employment of the new farmer. “Manyasarande aye takaatandanisa! – We got rid of all the Nyasalanders!” he chortled as he congratulated himself for dismissing the labourers he had inherited from the white farmer. Mugabe’s black farmer had deeply seated contempt for the black workers. To him, they were Malawian interlopers hence the use of the profoundly derogatory Manyasarande colonial-era epithet. Munyasarande is a loaded noun. It captures a terrible stereotype of someone who is a permanent alien, a person incapable of assimilation into a new cultural environment and, therefore, irredeemably and hopelessly uncultured. The original immigrants are all dead and all their descendants are Zimbabwean, any which way you look at it. However, to this ignoramus Mugabe farmer, the "Nyasarande" traits are heritable like Adam’s sin. I was furious. I have relatives of Malawian extraction who are some of the most patriotic, honest, God-loving and ethically enterprising Zimbabweans. They have never been to Malawi and yet Mugabe’s goofball was dismissing them as gypsies. For all of Mugabe’s endless incantations about African Solutions for African Problems, the attitude of this beneficiary of the ZANU-PF’s catastrophic land program had no iota of sympathy for a fellow black African. Some will say I should have known that Mugabe’s cronies are as insincere as the man himself. You will have to excuse my French, folks, I was pissed off big time! The black farmer’s supremacist attitude encapsulates the mentality of the circle of lunatics that surrounds Mugabe. They are shameless bearers of false witness and will blatantly lie if it gives them political and material mileage. The ZANU-PF farmer's xenophobic characterization of the farm labourers fits the ZANU-PF modus operandi. Like Munyaradzi Wasosa put it, when a leopard wants to eat its children it starts by accusing them of smelling like goats. If anyone stands in the way of the Mugabe crime syndicate, nothing will keep the supposed offender from a torrent of invective and, increasingly, abductions, torture and gruesome death. That is how the Stalinist-Maoists in ZANU-PF operate. It comes straight from the playbook of Joe Stalin whereby you dehumanize and demonize your victims first and then rob them of their property and lives thereafter. When ZANU-PF wants to give commercial farms as gifts or bribes to placate disgruntled party followers, Zimbabwean commercial farmers are attacked as white farmers, a charge which is equivalent to calling the farmers unrepentant racists. How can all the farmers who used to produce enough food to feed the entire region be racists? Incredibly, the same land is now owned by Mugabe’s cronies, most of whom had never even cultivated a backyard garden of vegetables before receiving the farms as payment for loyalty to Mugabe’s revolution. It is widely believed that some of these new farmers keep the farms so they can get subsidized fuel, seeds and fertilizer that are then sold on the black market. Farming requires constant and monomaniacal attention. I have to wonder where someone like Samuel Mumbengegwi gets the time to be both a viable commercial farmer and a minister, even in a completely dysfunctional government. The truth of the matter is that it is not just the commercial farmers that have been demonized by the ZANU-PF Mafia. “Puppets and prostitutes!” shouts Mugabe when blacks object to his disasterous policies; When Justin Mukoko decided to go and catalogue acts of terrorism and theft of food aid perpetrated by ZANU-PF, she got charged with terrorism with the possibility of get hanged if convicted in Mugabe’s kangaroo court. What the colonialists did to Nehanda Nyakasikana, the ZANU-PF nationalists want to do to Justina Mukoko. People born and bred in Zimbabwe are quickly labelled foreigners / Manyasarande they pointed out refuse to vote for the continuance of Mugabe’s ineptitude running of the country. The irony of it all is that there are some rumours, which are silly in my opinion, to the effect that Mugabe himself has Malawian / Nyasarande blood flowing in his veins. What we know is that one of his nephews, Patrick Zhuwao, definitely has a Chikunda name. Zhuwao is an indigenized Portuguese name Joao. Comrade Mugabe may profess to hate the British but he seems to like aping them at every opportunity. He tries to speak English like a Britisher. When it comes to dividing and conquering, the man learnt a lot from his colonial masters. Criminals in ZANU-PF may have arrogated to themselves the right to determine who is and who is not Zimbabwean but we do not have to ape them. We need to renounce ZANU-PF’s xenophobic lexicon once and for all. There are no white farmers, there are no Manyasarande, there are no Mandevere and there are no Maindiya. Their forebears might have come to present-day Zimbabwe from different parts of the world and at different times but that must not be the defining character to their citizenship. These are Zimbabweans, pure and simple. Anyone who insists otherwise must be considered a criminal.

Zimbabwe's Political Reptiles

Zimbabwe has two troublesome reptiles; call it Zimbabwean’s reptilian problem if you want. One is from Tsholotsho and the other one is from Mberengwa. These two reptiles work very well as a team; at least they think they do. One works as the brainy thinker while the other works as a brutal brawny enforcer. Sooner or later they will turn on each other especially in light of the unpredictable character of the Tsholotsho reptile.

Whatever aura of invincibility that it has been trying to build around itself lately, recent events have dealt the Mberengwa reptile a telling blow to its political ambitions. These events, some of its own making and others beyond its control, clearly show that this reptile lacks foresight and may actually betray political ineptitude on its part. Some would go as far as saying that the Mberengwa reptile has always been more dependent on its brawn than its brain in spite of the fact that it is said to be a lawyer by training. For that reason, it still finds time to amuse itself with thoughts and dreams of becoming president of the Republic of Zimbabwe, a position that can only be legitimately occupied by a human being rather than a reptile trapped in the body of a human being.

Africa’s tired and discredited nationalist parties always need one or two reptiles to sustain their grip on power. In Zimbabwe, the Mberengwa reptile has been quite useful for ZANU-PF not because of its wits, if it has any, but its willingness to use violence. Although it has the physical attributes of a human being, you begin realize that it is actually a reptile as soon as it starts talking. This reptile, like all reptiles trapped in human bodies, talks before its brains are in motion. That will be the beginning of its end. A fool’s tongue brings it nothing but ruin.

If reports are to be believed, it made a very curious graveside confession. “I was trained to kill and destroy,” it is reported to have blurted out as it buried its brother. Perhaps these words were aroused by a sudden realization of its own mortality or a touch of Ubuntu morality, typically absent in reptiles, descended upon it thereby prompting the strange graveside confession.

It is a strange confession because, for starters, the Mberengwa reptile is said to have claimed to be a born-again Christian. Confession in the Christian or moral sense, is the first step towards getting absolved. Simply professing the acceptance of Jesus Christ as a savior is not enough. The words have to show contrition and acceptance of deliberate wrong doing. The reptile’s supposed confession clearly lacked contrition.

As a lawyer, one would think the Mberengwa reptile would know the difference between killing and murdering. Killing is what happens when one of equally armed combatants loses his or her life. It is the culmination of a struggle between equals. In non-legal terms, killing and destroying are what one does to pests like rats and cockroaches.

The victims of the Gukurahundi Genocide were not as well armed as the Fifth Brigade militia, NEVER! They were practically unarmed civilians. Calling their loss of life a killing is actually insulting the memory of the innocent Zimbabweans who perished at the hands of a militia said by Enos Nkala to have been answerable to the Mberengwa reptile and its talkative master. Lest we have forgotten it, Nkala was the Minister of Defense at that time. Former Defense Minister Nkala’s words pointedly implicated the Mberengwa reptile and its talkative master.

Let us dispense with the parlance of evasions and call a spade by its name. Zimbabweans who perished in the Gukurahundi Genocide were murdered in cold blood! They were not as well-armed as the militia led by the Mberengwa reptile and its talkative master. The victims were not pests like rats and cockroaches either. The people who died because of Operation Murambatsvina were not killed but were murdered! Zimbabweans who were maimed or who lost their lives during Operation Mavhoterapapi were not destroyed but murdered!

It may be true that a reptile cannot tell the distinction between killing and murdering. That is the reason it was created a reptile, even if, by quirk of nature, it was trapped in the body of a human being. Its own words, if it said them, condemn it as a cold-blooded venomous reptile trapped in the body of a human being.

To nobody’s surprise, it has teamed up with another reptile from Tsholotsho, the bald-headed chameleon that fancies a cowboy hat. Said chameleon once said its father was killed during Operation Gukurahundi – why soften the horrible act by calling it a killing instead of murder? Zimbabweans know the answer now because the Tsholotsho reptile is back to its old ways, dancing on its father’s grave with the cold-blooded venomous Mberengwa reptile implicated by Former Defense Minister Nkala.

Some people have called the Tsholotsho reptile a prostitute. That is an unnecessary, unfair and deeply insulting slur. The accusers have to apologize to all the prostitutes for being degraded to the level of a reptile that only survives by changing its coat colours to deceive its enemies and fair-weather friends. Prostitutes are but women forced by desperation to engage in, and endure, the undignified act of using their bodies to survive. It is a last act of desperate women facing desperate times. The Tsholotsho reptile cannot be considered desperate if rumours of it handing out wads of American dollars, while stupidly claiming that Zimbabwe will never be a colony again reptilian-style, to buy votes. Consequently, to call the wretched and deceitful Tsholotsho reptile a prostitute is an insult to all prostitutes.

These two troublesome reptiles, previously accused of trying to overthrow their talkative master but failed because it is the fate of reptiles to fail every time they confront human beings, have lately been up to their old reptilian games again. While the wretched and deceitful Tsholotsho reptile has been spitting venomous saliva and causing mayhem by going to courts presided over by reptilian judges, the cold-blooded venomous Mberengwa reptile has been recruiting, training and arming mobs of drug-addled zombies to not only bay for but also spill the blood of innocent Zimbabweans whose only crime is to want freedom from reptiles.

Fortunately, the irreversibly changing world political climate is conspiring against these two reptilian monsters. The scent of change is even detectable in the den of the reptiles. When the wretched and deceitful Tsholotsho reptile tried to undo the will of the Zimbabwean people by overthrowing the speaker of parliament, it failed. In a very hilarious tactic, it is said that the human beings nominated the wretched and deceitful Tsholotsho reptile for the Speaker of Parliament of Zimbabwe. By so doing, the decent human beings hornswoggled the wretched and deceitful Tsholotsho reptile from voting, a classic and hilarious neutering of the vile reptile.

To add to its wretched trail of failure, the vote revealed to the nation the existence of at least two human beings in the den of the reptiles. The two decent human beings decided to cast their lot with fellow human beings against the reptiles with whom they co-habitat. The wretched and deceitful Tsholotsho reptile is not very happy. It is reportedly wriggling and hissing in a fit of reptilian fury.

When the inevitable happens, the wretched and deceitful Tsholotsho reptile is going to find itself countersued into a pitiful beggar. The cold-blooded and venomous Mberengwa reptile will have to count itself lucky to find itself sued. Having set the precedent by chaining Elton Mangoma, the hideous way Africans were brought to the slave auction, for unproven charges of corruption, while a certain mediocre university lecturer who suddenly accrued vast tracts of prime land once appointed minister not because of competence but patronage goes scot-free, the Zimbabwean people are watching and soaking up every act of injustice perpetrated at the behest of the troublesome reptiles each and every day. Human justice will be visited upon these reptiles trapped in human bodies.

Since the cold-blooded reptile claims to have found comfort in the arms of Jesus, perhaps it will remember that said comforter said that as you do unto others so shall be done unto you, by what measure you measure so will you be measured. Soon this reptile will find itself manacled and dragged to court for the crimes of murder. A cage in The Hague, Milosevic-style, may be too nice. The cage and its reptile must be taken to every village in Matebeleland and Midlands so that the reptile can be held accountable and tried 20,000 times.

The two troublesome reptiles know this reality is getting closer and closer. They ought to know how human beings deal with troublesome reptiles. They either tame the reptiles by looping off their poison glands or get rid of them by looping off their heads. To fend off their fate, they have recruited two young reptiles. The one in Zimbabwe talks like it has psychological problems only a n’anga from Maroro can cure, perhaps a traditional renaming rite may remove the apparent curse/psychosis typical of psychological imbalance.

The other young reptile peddles wishful reptilian thoughts, perhaps for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver, as historical human facts. This young reptile says the tsunami sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East (NAME) is a quirk that will gain no traction in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Zimbabwean reptile in Oxford England, the breeding and grooming hatchery of the British vampires trapped in human bodies, curiously cites the case of Laurent Gbagbo, the la Cote D’Ivorie reptile that no sensible African wants milling around the halls of power.

Despite recruiting, training and arming mobs of drug-addled zombies to not only bay for but shed the blood of the innocent people of the Ivory Coast who want freedom from reptiles, unsubstantiated rumours of help from the cold-blooded Mberengwa reptile have been whispered, Gbagbo is pinned down in the presidential palace he mysteriously believes he owns until death do part him from the house. Laurent Gbagbo is trapped. Abidjan Airport is now out of his control, which means he will either die like a rat trapped in a burning hut or he will have to walk straight into detention to await trial for subverting the will of the people.

Laurent Gbagbo’s fate was determined the moment regional powers blatantly refused to endorse his continued grip on power in defiance of the will of the citizens of Cote D’Ivorie who wanted him gone from the halls of power. The talkative master of the cold-blooded and venomous Mberengwa reptile now faces the same predicament. Initially, the regional powers had endorsed the grip on power by the talkative master of the cold-blooded and venomous Mberengwa reptile. These regional powers were swindled into believing that their words and sincerity would be respected.

Now the regional powers know what the Zimbabwean people have known for the past 31 years. The talkative master of the cold-blooded and venomous Mberengwa reptile dismisses sincerity as gullibility to be scoffed off and, sincerity as a weakness of character deserving of getting short shrift. Instead of getting words of gratitude for letting the talkative master of the cold-blooded and venomous Mberengwa reptile retain power in spite of being overwhelmingly rejected by the decent people of Zimbabwe, the regional powers suddenly find themselves getting publicly insulted. Despite making sure that the talkative master of the cold-blooded and venomous Mberengwa reptile remained in power notwithstanding obvious incapacitation by age, illness and electoral rejection, Jacob Zuma is now getting publicly insulted and ridiculed.

Despite hiring the reptile in a kanguwani to tell them what they want to hear instead of the truth, the fate of our troublesome reptiles is now sealed, hence the opening salvo of insults. After being made to look like a pack of fools, SADC leaders are literally sick and tired of ZANU-PF reptilian shenanigans thus culminating in President Rupiah Banda ordering the talkative master of the two troublesome reptiles to shut up and dismissing its talkative ways as nonsensical.

In 2008, the two reptiles were in the Last Chance Saloon. They should have packed their bags and left quietly in the manner of the murderous Peter Walls, insolent Ian Douglas Smith, and the grinning clown called Abel Muzorewa Bishop of Beelzebub. Instead of listening to the lying liar in a kanguwani, the troublesome reptiles should be trying to find a way they can get painlessly accommodated in the coming national order. They get another opportunity to save their reptilian skins in the Last Chance Saloon.

Is South Africa Deliberately Undermining Zimbabwean Democracy?

Tsanga Tutankhamen Shanga; 17th October 2010

For too long the world in general, and some Zimbabweans in particular, have been hoping against hope that South Africa would play a constructive role in bringing sanity back to the basket case of a country that has been run by the murderous clique called ZANU-PF. It had been hoped that the ANC-led government would recall the sacrifices made by the Zimbabwean people in the fight that culminated in the demise of the evil apartheid system. Zimbabweans played one of the pivotal roles in the liberation of South Africa. Surely, some form of reciprocity would have been in order.

Furthermore, conventional wisdom says that a stable neighbourhood is good for everyone so much so that each and every member of the community pines for peace. It is a simple dictate. If a hut in the community catches fire, most of the able-bodied members of the community rush to fight the fire. Common decency commends it and one’s safety demands it. Politically and economically, Zimbabwe has been on fire but the behaviour and the response of the African National Congress have stunningly defied conventional wisdom on common decency.

South Africa is unique in this regard. Rarely in the history of mankind has the leadership of a country tacitly encouraged political and economic mayhem in a neighbouring country. An unstable neighbour poses danger to the adjacent countries. Thus, the behaviour of the South African government may come across as bizarre when inspected on the surface. Contrary to the notion that instability in the neighbourhood poses danger to the whole community, the ANC tolerates and even subtly encourages political instability in Zimbabwe, it seems.

This Zimbabwean, for one, has never been fooled by the circus show put by Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma. Each successive ANC leader of the South African government has only given an appearance of a genuine peace broker. Time after time after time, each one of these so-called African leaders has visited Zimbabwe only to be greeted and garlanded by a smiling Robert Mugabe on the airport tarmac, never mind that said Mugabe is the undignified rubble rouser in the mess they seek to arbitrate.

Far be it from me but one does not need to be a rocket scientist to realize that the ANC leadership has been putting one dog-and-pony show after another. Judging from the strategy of repeating the same method despite the fact that the results remain the same, the medical definition of madness, the series of circus shows is never meant to solve the Zimbabwean mess but actually maintain and contain it. The ANC leadership wants the mess in Zimbabwe to continue while making sure it does not spiral out of control. That, my fellow Zimbabweans, seems to be the motive of the ANC with respect to Zimbabwe.

The peculiar brand of diplomacy played by the ANC-led South African government, which is undermining democracy in Zimbabwe, is motivated by brazen selfishness. When the African National Council of South Africa talks about the brotherhood of all Africans, all you have to do is watch what they do. Do not pay attention to all the empty words.

It may not be mere gainsay to postulate that the ANC is working in cohorts with its industrialists and capitalists to make sure that Zimbabwe remains a basket case. In the short term, it is good for the South African economy and also provides political cover for the ANC government.

When Mbeki, then South African president and arbitrator to Zimbabwean political settlement, said there is no crisis in Zimbabwe and that Zimbabwe is not a South African province, a lot of people were genuinely stunned. At that time, there was a crisis in Zimbabwe. There still is a crisis in Zimbabwe! ZANU-PF is the problem, as identified by the former editor of Talk Zimbabwe.

As for Zimbabwe not being a South African province, of course it never was and never will be a South African province! Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF have made sure that Zimbabwe is actually worse than a province of South Africa. Zimbabwe is a source of supremely educated and highly skilled chattel slaves for South Africa’s farms, mines, financial industry, hospitals and public sector.

Julius Malema may have a name that calls him multiple fools but he openly acknowledged a self-evident truth that he may have heard whispered or openly discussed behind closed doors in Sandton. That truth is that Zimbabweans are highly educated, although Julius Multiple Fools gives credit to Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe. The politically connected Malema knows that Zimbabwean slaves now make a key component of the South African economy. Even Julius Multiple Fools accepts it would all end if Mugabe and ZANU-PF leave the seat and corridors of power in Zimbabwe hence his call for the continued support of ZANU-PF.

Hunger in the country of plenty, never-ending danger and a lingering shadow of death cast by ZANU-PF have condemned Zimbabweans to a life of toiling as slaves in foreign lands. When Zimbabwe is rid of Mugabe and ZANU-PF, her children will be emancipated from bondage. There will be an exodus as the Zimbabweans go back home en masse to rebuild their homeland to even more dizzying greatness and glory to surpass her proud past. It is a prospect that does not bode very well for South Africa.

Within the business world, South Africa is projected as one of the countries whose economy will grow in leaps and bounces. MAVINS is the acronym of the countries. South Africa is endowed with huge reserves of natural wealth but it will definitely need a huge pool of skilled, innovative and educated human resources. That supply is ready-made and cheaply available from north of the Limpopo River.

It is unimaginable that South Africa would be viewed so favourably were its economy dependent on the undependable and comparatively uneducated South African labour force. Zimbabweans domiciled and eking out a living in South African have made that country a highly attractive and promising economy force. The fortunate South African government did not have to spend a single Rand to educate the Zimbabwean slaves. Mugabe did that for them and they are reaping the rewards many times over. There should be little wonder that investors are salivating at the prospect of making huge financial windfalls by investing in the emerging economic power.

South African businessmen, the biggest beneficiaries of the toils of the Zimbabwean slaves must fear this potential loss of such cheap skilled labour. One can imagine the business leaders making a pilgrimage to meet the South African president and fearfully telling him not to deport the Zimbabwean kaffirs. “We need them because Mugabe's kaffirs are more educated, more skilled and more hardworking than our pleasure-loving kaffirs who are allergic to work.”

Once and for all, let us tell the truth and be done with it! For South Africa’s economy to grow and prosper, it will need the educated and skilled Zimbabweans forced into slavery by ZANU-PF. That, sons and daughters of the soil, is the apparent reason behind South Africa’s weird brand of failed diplomacy. It does not matter who is leading the country because South African interests necessitate the continuance of the political impasse in Zimbabwe.

When Mbeki engaged in his strange quite diplomacy, some averred the conspiratorial and illogical theory that he might have received a mine or farm in Zimbabwe. Wait until he is booted out of office, we heard, South Africa will be tough on Mugabe. I did not believe it one bit of it.

Some saw hope in Motlanthe’s ascension to power after Mbeki lost the power struggle against the singing, dancing and openly polygamous Jacob Zuma. As part of a COSATU delegate, Motlanthe had been humiliatingly deported from Zimbabwe by Mugabe. So, it was thought, Motlanthe would still be smarting from the humiliation and be tougher on Mugabe who had forced him leave with his tail tucked between his legs.

Motlanthe’s approach was not that different from that of Mbeki, notwithstanding the personal indignity he had suffered at the hands of Mugabe. For the good of his country, the personal insults Motlanthe suffered were swallowed. It was more important to make sure that Mugabe remained intransigent so that the South African economy’s supply of Zimbabwean slaves was not disrupted.

Then Jacob Zuma came to power making a lot of noise about being tough with Robert Mugabe. In some circles he was touted as the tough Zulu warrior who was going to take care of Mugabe once and for all. Once in power, the South African business community must have warned him on the dangers of getting rid of Mugabe. It is now back to the same peculiar brand of diplomacy.

The idea of designating the South African head of state as a pointman to steer Zimbabwean democracy towards the path of nomalcy as the genesis of the economic revival and growth of Zimbabwe into a prosperous nation was misguided from the beginning. There are deeply disturbing signs of a huge conflict of interest. The Zimbabwean people have the right to ask the pressing question, viz.: Is the ANC-led South African government deliberately undermining Zimbabwean democracy so that it can tape into the cheap pool of labour supplied by the desperate citizens of Zimbabwe?

In That Case, Keep Barking Comrade Pongo

by Tsanga Tutankhamen Shanga: 19th January 2010

Responding to my opinion-editorial published by Nehanda Radio, Pongo did not seem to understand the crux of my rebuttal to his stream of ZANU-PF propaganda. Pongo’s WMDs will not exculpate Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Comrade Pongo can say falsehoods all he wants but his words will not change the immutable facts on the ground, namely, Zimbabwe’s sorrowful state is a culmination of Mugabe’s incompetence, mean-spiritedness and shamelessly exploitative character coupled with his association with and baffling promotion of a troop of hapless cheerleaders, shameless bottom feeders, criminally corrupt sycophants and hordes of brainless thugs specifically trained to constantly bay for the blood of their compatriots.

This was no mere conjuncture on my part. Others have issued even more damning statements regarding Mugabe’s rule. No less than Comrade Pongo’s newly found ideological compadre, Professor Jonathan Moyo, has said some of the most withering condemnations of Mugabe’s misrule.

In one of his op-ed published by the New Zimbabwe, the professor had the following choice words; “Mugabe has publicly demonstrated leadership incapacity.” Furthermore, in the same op-ed, Professor Moyo eviscerated Mugabe by stating that “[t]hat Mugabe must now go is thus no longer a dismissible opposition slogan but a strategic necessity that desperately needs urgent legal and constitutional action by Mugabe himself.” An observer of this hard fact, says the professor, need not “be a malcontent to see that, after 25 years of controversial rule and with the economy melting down as a direct result of that rule, Mugabe's continued stay in office has become such an excessive burden to the welfare of the state and such a fatal danger to the public interest of Zimbabweans at home and in the diaspora that each day that goes by with him in office leaves the nation's survival at great risk while seriously compromising national sovereignty.”

Having watched Mugabe at close range, Professor Moyo tells us that Mugabe is a man “without compassion” and a man who leads a government prone to “irrational acts” which speak “volumes of his cold and cruel leadership style.” On Mugabe’s incompetence, Professor Moyo says that Mugabe “still makes very interesting bombastic speeches that are applauded for their entertainment value and which are full of sound and fury but signifying precious little at the level of policy and action.” Since Pongo takes umbrage with such observations, one hopes he will have an opportunity to talk to Professor Moyo to find out if the professor still stands by his words. Don’t bet the farm of it, dear reader.

Verily I say ZANU-PF cretins have a better chance of commanding the moon to move by barking at it than they have of changing self-evident truths no matter how much they insist on barking. Comrade Pongo is painfully aware of this stark truth. Consequently, he swiftly tries to conflate what he calls the expression of black self-hatred with telling the truth about Mugabe’s thirty years of gross ill governance of Zimbabwe and the unforgivable abuse of its innocent citizens.

Comrade Pongo charges, and I quote; “Many-a-times (sic) you hear our dear brothers and sisters say black people, Africans, cannot lead they are corrupt. [T]his is an example of what oppression has done to some of our black brothers and sisters.” Whenever our dear brother Pongo hears such observations, he has to remember that, in the case of Zimbabwe, these are not idle condemnations but the simple stating of facts. People should not be disparaged for telling the unvarnished truth.

He says he is all for a free debate based on historical facts but Pongo runs away from the subject of the parlous state of Zimbabwe faster than the devil runs away from Holy Water. Trying to muddle up everything, he cacophonously charges that “[a] lot of my Zimbabwean colleagues still suffer from inferiority complex- dare I say -a result of the colonial legacy of denigration and derision passed down from their forefathers who for years thought the Whiteman had answers to everything.” This observation might be true within the circle of people Pongo fraternizes with but I am not personally familiar with this archaic mindset.

Furthermore, our dear brother accuses his Zimbabwean colleagues who “viewed [sic] the oppressors as diminutive-gods, even the chosen, the natural leaders,” “civilizers of the black African” and the only agents of meaningful progress. This is more of a confession, on Pongo’s part, than an accusation. It is Comrade Pongo himself who suffers from these maladies since he talks about them with incredible alacrity and, like birds of the same plumage, flocks with similarly afflicted Zimbabweans.

Pongo says that he is supportive of the unfolding looting disguised as land reacquisition, black empowerment and indigenization. If what is going on, at the instigation of the British-educated Didymus Mutasa, is what passes for black empowerment, indigenization and land reform, may God help us. These are meaningless buzzwords meant to arouse the anger of people who suffer from regular bouts of emotional incontinence. Genuine land reform would never have taken more than twenty years to put into effect. Land stirs up a lot of emotion so much so that it is a potent political battering ram with which to knock down opponents.

For years, Zimbabweans have witnessed the abuse of the issue of land for political mileage by ZANU-PF. No one from the current crop of ZANU-PF lot is genuinely interested in taking care of this issue to finality and satisfaction of all concerned parties. The late Canaan Banana was truly exceptional in this regard. Despite his personal failings, which all of us have, he tried his best when he established Kushinga-Phikelela National Farmer Training Centre Institutional.

A patriotic visionary, former President Banana must have realized that the indigenization of the agriculture sector of our economy would bring more prosperity if the future black farmers were properly trained for the task ahead. By now, Zimbabwe would have had very good and very prosperous black farmers trained at KushPhike. How many of the new farmers meet the minimum standards of eligibility and how many have been trained there? Since you want a meaningful and fact-based debate, Comrade Pongo, tell us.

What is going on is a witch’s brew of political vindictiveness and barefaced looting. Land reform it is not! Take the case of Mai Sally Mugabe’s orphanage. What justification is there for the looting that went on at Mbuya Nehanda Orphanage? Please, some one tell us. Where the orphans there whitemen’s children? Perhaps the birthright that Pongo so assertively barks about does not extend to Zimbabwean orphans.

What is even more shocking is that the desecration of the cause Mai Sally Mugabe championed so vigorously has been condemned neither by her husband nor anyone in ZANU-PF. Without surprise, the culprits have yet to be brought to book. What a shocking betrayal of so noble a person! Mai Sally, may her soul rest in peace, must be turning in her grave.

“I choose not to sell my birthright,” barks Pongo. “I for one am a proponent of the land reacquisition programme and I believe that our land is indeed our prosperity, it is our birthright.” Like everything else that Pongo and his ZANU-PF ilk have been saying, these are vacuous political slogans contradicted by the reality on the ground. The forced removal of black farmers, war veterans amongst them, to make way for Billy Rautenbach at Nuanetsi tells us the veracity of the above cited trope is nil. Here is a whiteman getting help from ZANU-PF, the self-proclaimed champions of black land reacquisition, put his hands on the blackman’s “birthright.” That is a weird manner to go about this so-called land reform program, unless Billy Rautenbach has morphed into a black Zimbabwean in desperate need of economic empowerment.

Beyond pouting off slogans that are as old as the hills of our beloved Zimbabwe, perhaps Comrade Pongo can enlighten us on the difference between Mr Mayer and Mr Rautenbach – or is it Comrade Rautenbach? I am not very hopeful, though. It took Pongo a visit to his maternal grandparents to disabuse himself of his hitherto ignorance on the issue of land disgruntlement. For a political ideologue, that is a very damning confession.

Those of us who want a genuine land reform program already know the historical inequalities of landownership. ZANU-PF ideologues do not have a monopoly on this knowledge. I did not have to visit my maternal grandparents to fully understand the issue of land. In my own village, I knew we needed productive land for our crops and animals. I have known this ever since I was a boy when I was old enough to tend the fields as well as herd cattle and goats. On this issue, the last thing I need is a reminder from a clueless opportunist.

Equally infuriating is the accumulation of huge tracts of land by an emergent Mugabe-aided oligarchy. It is a great injustice and barking hollow slogans will not convince the Zimbabwean people otherwise. In the 1970s, Mugabe passionately attacked this practice as a gross injustice. Thirty years later, that injustice is still plaguing us. As it is, the land reform we have is following the same dangerous and destabilizing trajectory of the endless Mexican land reforms. After more than a century since the Mexican peasants fought a revolution, the peasants are still up in arms after the betrayal by the leaders of the land revolution. It is dangerous. We do not need a Chiapas-type of crisis in Zimbabwe 100 years from now.

Pongo claims to despise the West but has a rather curious way of showing it. He hates the United Kingdom so much so that he is fretful of getting booted out of it kicking and screaming like Caesar Zvayi did when he was deported from Botswana. After vilifying Zimbabwean critics of ZANU-PF misrule by intimating they are servile Uncle Toms, it turns out that the ZANU-PF motormouth says one thing and does the exact opposite.

On his farm, if it can be called a farm at all, Spanish taxpayers seemingly support animal husbandry activities. The last time I checked, Spain was a whiteman’s country. Moreover, Spain has a very sordid colonial past. It was the Spaniard conquistadores that destroyed the great Mesoamerican civilizations. Accordingly, I find it strange that Pongo finds nothing wrong getting money from a nation that has a genocidal past.

Instead of getting his education in the land of his birthright, he has been busy trying to acquire knowledge in the west. What is even funnier is that the race-baiting Pongo transferred from the University of Wolverhampton to Westminster University. For a self-proclaimed proud anti-imperialist, Pongo was not satisfied getting a degree at a provincial university, oh no! That would not do. He decided to show everyone how much he despises whites by going to drink from a fountain of knowledge located right at the locus of the same evil forces of white supremacy he claims to hate. Pongo could have acquired his degrees at the University of Zimbabwe had he been smart enough to qualify for that great institution. Based on the quality of his public writings, Pongo would never have made it to and through UZ. I ought to know, I am a product of that university.

Comrade Pongo attacks what he calls “hand-me-downs from pikinini bhasi mwana wemurungu ayishandirwa nevabereki.” Gone unsaid here is that under ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe has increasingly sustained itself on hand-me-downs from the imperial West. When the IMF, based in Washington DC and, therefore, part of the pikinini bhasi setup, released some money meant for boosting the crippled economy, the kleptocrats in ZANU-PF could not wait to put their dirty hands on the hand-me-down moolah.

Much to their dismay, Tendai Biti told them to keep their sticky fingers off the money. How the thieves howled in protest, true to their form when the money was kept away from them. Like a helpless and hopeless drug addict, ZANU-PF has developed an incurable clinical dependence on the hand-me-downs thrown at it by the pikinini bhasi in London, Madrid and Washington DC.

The poor quality of some of the hand-me-downs that ZANU-PF has gladly gobbled up is truly comical. When China donated some rickety hand-me-down plane, I laughed when the donation was touted as a huge message of intent. The Chinese had just bought a fleet of planes from Boeing and could gladly sell their homemade flying coffins to the gullible ZANU-PF desperadoes. If the planes were that good, the Chinese would have retained them. I laughed when a free plane, mbasera, was added to the two that had been purchased.

In Harare, I have seen vegetable sellers give loyal customers free tomatoes or fruits. Usually these are about to be thrown away because they would not be good for too long. I laughed again and again when one of the rickety planes caught fire and the other failed to take off after presumably running into wild hogs.

Not only have we had to depend on hand-me-downs but we have also been reduced to pitifully beg for more food like a famished Oliver Twist. The biggest benefactor is the United States of America, which has donated an inordinate amount of food aid compared to our-so-called ideological brothers in Beijing.

Pongo is of the opinion I am mounting a jihad against him. He is mistaken. I do not see it that way. As an ordinary Zimbabwean, I am sick and tired of ZANU-PF operatives saying the same old tired platitudes much to the detriment of the wellbeing of our country. Perhaps Pongo was not expecting others to talk back. What he wants is a monologue not a debate. As my compatriot, I will publicly declare that I fully support his right to freely express his opinion. Nonetheless, he should not expect Zimbabweans who hold counterviews to say or do nothing.

ZANU-PF has pushed around the Zimbabwean people for too long. It is inevitable that they are tired of it so much so that the people are ready, willing and able to effectively push back. It is the natural order of things. The cartel knows what is coming and has nobody to blame but its members.

The unveiling of Brilliant Billy Pongo as a ZANU-PF propagandist in the United Kingdom and the re-emergence of Jonathan Moyo tell us that ZANU-PF is now a completely ideologically bankrupt party. If Professor Moyo is a brainy political chameleon then Comrade Pongo, who might fancy himself a political chameleon, is a delusional political gecko – chiguyakuya – that stupidly believes that it can change its colours for concealment.

However, both men have value beyond that which their masters pay them for. The words that have been penned by the brainy political chameleon and the feckless political gecko have a lot of probative value for agents of political, economical and cultural renaissance of Zimbabwe. They reveal a political entity that is ideologically unhinged.

Pongo’s desperate barking gives us a flavour of what is going on in the tribally fractured ZANU-PF cartel. In that case, keep barking Comrade Pongo.

Pongo Barking at the Moon

by Tsanga Tutankhamen Shanga: 9th January 2010

Brilliant Pongo, whose attempt to become an internet disc jockey may have flopped disastrously, seems to have found a new hobby, defending Mugabe’s custodianship of Zimbabwe that has, after thirty years of wielding power, flopped disastrously. One hopes that the dull attempts to imitate the buck-toothed Joseph Chinotimba by Comrade Pongo, oxymoronically named Brilliant, meet the same fate as his bilge-water-type Growth Point Starter Pack tenure. To accelerate the inevitable emollition of Comrade Pongo’s apparently self-serving indefensible defence of Mugabe’s tyranny, it is instructive to put Brilliant’s spurious charges under the microscope every time he musters the brass nerve to wittingly spread risible falsehoods.

In his latest instalment of words of mass deception (WMDs), the dreadlocked and red-eyed Comrade Pongo irritatingly barks at the imposition of targeted sanctions against members of the ZANU-PF criminal syndicate. “Some people will be quick to apportion blame on President Mugabe and ZANU PF, but is it all down to one man (sic)?” asks Comrade Pongo. The answer to that one is simple; it took one patently incompetent, mean-spirited and shamelessly exploitative man working in connivance with a troop of hapless cheerleaders, shameless bottom feeders, criminally corrupt sycophants and hoards of brainless thugs specifically trained to constantly bay for the blood of their compatriots. That, Comrade Pongo, is what brought ruin to Zimbabwe.

In 1980, Mugabe inherited a nation that was ready to take off after the end of a debilitating war. Keen-eyed African leaders realized how fortunate it was for Mugabe. “You have inherited a jewel. Keep it that way,” Mwalimu Nyerere advised Mugabe. Tone deaf as he is, Mugabe did not listen. He had a more hard-pressing issue to attend to; consolidating all the power into his hands not for any noble goal but just for the sake of it. After a few cosmetic changes like the effortless task of changing nameplates on roads and renaming mountains and rivers, he got the ball rolling on his brutal and wicked quest for absolute power.

Mugabe is monomaniacal when he makes up his mind. Once he has a target, he will go for it full tilt, everything else be damned. So, without surprise, he set out to brutally decimate PF-ZAPU and members of its armed wing, the gallant ZIPRA forces. Looking back, PF-ZAPU offered an ideological alternative to what would turn out to be Mugabe’s misguided and ill-conceived brand of Marxism-Leninism. ZIPRA cadres, whose patriotism to the Zimbabwean cause was and has never been in question, posed a huge military buffer to his ambition for imperial-style power.

In short order, Joshua Nkomo had to be caricatured as a tribal overlord, liberation war heroes Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku had to be broken down. To rally the nation, we were told that Nkomo, Dabengwa and Masuku had cached arms to seize the country. Subliminally, the Shonas were fooled into thinking that the loathed Madzviti raids were in the offing. It is an old trick that works all the time; demonize your enemy and then pounce. It is even better if you can goad a few miscreants in the other camp to behave stupidly. It might have been the same approach the ZANU-PF used, goading a few hot-headed ZIPRA ex-combatants to provide a casus belli. That is what happened and so was the beginning of the crime we all know as the Gukurahundi Genocide.

Gukurahundi was a continuation of the power play that started long before Zimbabwe became independent or, as it turned out, Mugabe’s personal fiefdom. Within the ZANU-PF structure, potential opponents of Mugabe’s seizure of absolute power were weeded out. Josiah Tongogara posed the biggest threat to Mugabe’s quest for power. If Oppah Muchinguri’s recent utterances are credible, Tongogara was assassinated. Cui bono? Who had the most to gain from the murder of Josiah Tongogara? The same cast of characters that has become wildly wealthy by looting the country’s resources. As Mugabe was busy vasectomizing all opposition, the country fell apart because of sheer negligence. This was long before the imposition of sanctions.

Others have catalogued the unimaginable corruption that Mugabe’s syndicate started as soon as PF-ZAPU had been thrashed into submission. Thanks to Geoff Nyarota and his journalists at the Bulawayo-based The Chronicle Newspaper, the thieves masquerading as our liberators were caught engaging in common theft called the Willogate Scandal. Robert Mugabe was in it up to his neck. It was Maurice Nyagumbo who implicated Mugabe as a participant in the illegal Willogate shenanigans. Some have said the lovable Mrs Sally Mugabe, the only sensible Mugabe the country has ever known, was also getting Toyota Cressida cars to ship to Ghana. That charge is silly at best and libellous at worst. Mai Mugabe was too busy taking care of her orphanages to engage in the stealing and shipping of cars. It was the bigamist Mugabe himself who needed the ill-gotten money to support his clandestine mistress.

After the dog-and-pony show, the Sandura Commission, meant to hoodwink the nation into believing Mugabe was against corruption, the looting picked pace. Mugabe also used the opportunity to consolidate his grip on ZANU-PF. Dead men tell no tales so poor Maurice Nyagumbo conveniently committed suicide, as we were told. Enos Nkala was booted out. Edgar Tekere would soon be shown the door for his pestilent noises about ZANU-PF corruption. By then Tongogara had been long gone from the scene and Ndabaningi Sithole had been reduced to a cartoon character. Thus, of the original ZANU founders, nobody was left to remind Mugabe of the original ethos of the party. Nobody except the self-deluding Edison Zvobgo who foolishly thought he would one day take over from Mugabe – are you paying attention Comrade Mnangagwa? Comrade Pongo, this was well before the imposition of sanctions.

ZANU-PF was quickly transformed to suit Mugabe’s incomprehensible thirst for power. Cheerleaders soon replaced Nkala, Tekere, Nyagumbo and Tongogara. Like hungry vultures that have spotted a carcass, shameless opportunists descended onto the scene. The boisterous and show-boating Philip Chiyangwa is a prime example of the vultures that have ruined Zimbabwe. Sanctions, Comrade Dreadlocked Dread, have actually seen the members of the ZANU-PF crime syndicate brazenly steal and embezzle their way into fabulous wealth. The shortage of basic commodities like fuel and fertilizer only made the cartel richer at a quicker pace.

I have previously noted that sanctions have proven to be very devastating primarily because Mugabe has never cared and will never ever care for the wellbeing of the Zimbabwean people. He could have learnt from Ian Smith, P. W. Botha or Fidel Castro. Despite an energy-sapping war, Smith found a way around the sanctions imposed after the UDI. The Afrikaner Regime took advantage of the natural riches of South Africa to fend off sanctions. One impressive example is the coal-to-oil industry that resulted in the birth of the industrial city of Sasolburg. Sasol, a company born out of Botha’s sanction-busting agenda, is now a multinational company listed on the world’s biggest stock markets. Castro’s Cuba has been under sanctions for almost half a century and yet Cuba has one of the world’s best healthcare systems. While Mugabe runs to China for treatment, a testament to how far he has destroyed the country’s healthcare system, Fidel Castro is taken care of within Cuba. Incompetent Mugabe, unlike the troika of Smith, Botha and Castro, failed because he does not care.

Pongo laments the detrimental flight of talented Zimbabweans from their own motherland. Brilliant, point that finger of yours at the image of the man on your freaking T-shirt, one Robert Gabriel Mugabe! It is Mugabe that caused the largest involuntary mass dislocation of Africa’s children since the heinous crime of the Slave Trade. Mugabe is complicit in the re-enslavement of Africa’s Zimbabwean children by the very same imperial forces that he pretends to hate so much.

One has to wonder if Mugabe’s anger and irritation at the travel restrictions have more to do with his longing to kiss imperial rings in the courts of Europe again. He has been free to travel everywhere else. One would think he would be contended going to places like Beijing and Lilongwe. Mugabe is not happy with that. For a strange reason, he wants to visit Brussels and London.

The inevitable imposition of sanctions was prompted by the nationwide roguery of the ZANU-PF crime syndicate. That Mugabe has vainly tried to exploit the targeted sanctions only serves to reinforce the image of the man’s penchant for not being truthful with the Zimbabwean people.

Mugabe is a failed leader. Sanctions have nothing to do with it. So, give it a rest, Comrade Pongo. Stop barking at the moon.