The Zimbabwean Cyber Pundit

Jacob Zuma’s Unforgivable Sin

2011-04-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-10-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-10T00:05:00.000-08:00

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.

A Response to Muponda’s Smoke and Mirrors

2009-05-26T02:21:00.000-07:00

A Response to Muponda’s Smoke and Mirrors

by Tsanga Tutankhamen Shanga: 25th May 2009

I am totally surprised that the editors of The Zimbabwe Mail newspaper published Gilbert Muponda's rambling, error-riddled and disjointed piece. Clearly this was a piece put together without any serious forethought or modicum of effort to do basic background research – so much for the much-advertised Gilbert Muponda Research Institute. Publishing it is an insult to the readership of said cyber newspaper. That is what the facts say, just the facts, sir.

Firstly, as the owner of a whole raft of cyberspace newspapers, one would think that Gilbert Muponda would by now know that the letter purportedly written by Gideon Gono has since been exposed as a fake. According to reports, Morgan Tsvangirai has never received the letter nor has Gideon Gono acknowledged writing such a letter. If anything, Gono is on recording distancing himself from the letter that has received a lot of unnecessary bandwidth. Furthermore, it is reported that Gono is so livid about the letter that he has gone to Robert Mugabe so that the authorship of the letter can be verified and subsequently exonerate Gono from it scurrilous contents – George Charamba is the suspected culprit.

Secondly, Gilbert Muponda has at his disposal paid scribes and, I assume, real journalists who he could dispatch to engage in real investigative journalism. What we have, instead, is a man too preoccupied with promoting flummery. Any visitor to the Muponda-owned Zimbabwe Daily cyber newspaper will witness the on-going disintegration of a once mighty news fountain into a sexually racy paper. If truth be said, it is not a paper at all; it is more like a substandard Hugh Hefner’s rag.

Thirdly, Gilbert Muponda is fond of churning out half-baked opinion editorials, the most vapid and meretricious op-eds this side of Emperor Nero. To show his lack of spine, he will not let readers respond to his tropes. This is a tacit acceptance on his part that he is a man of limited thinking skills beyond what he learnt – probably by rote - from his economics textbooks. As a matter of fact, one respondent called him out by pointing out that his economic editorials were nothing but chunks lifted roots, trunk and branch from basic economics books then patched together. This is the man who is desperately trying to piggy-back his grievance on a fabricated affray between Gono and Tendai Biti. Muponda makes his case with stunning certitude saying, and I quote; “[T]he Governor is clearly threatening Minister Biti with arrest.” How Muponda draws such a clear-cut conclusion despite evidence pointing to the contrary is beyond me.

Finally, on the issue of Gono’s branding of Muponda’s business practices as verging on the criminal, Mr Muponda need not waste time trying to make his case in public fora. He faces charges of illegal, nay, criminal financial activities not very dissimilar from what David Butau faced. Like Butau, Muponda fled from the wrath of Zimbabwean law under the pretence of fleeing from political persecution by the Mugabe Regime. To his credit, David Butau went back home as soon as the environment was temperate enough. Guess what, he went to court to answer the charges levelled against him by Gono. David Butau was acquitted.

Muponda masquerades as a political refuge. Clearly he is not. Muponda is a fugitive wanted for financial crimes. Why not go home and face the charges like Butau bravely did? If he is innocent, as he protests, and I think the man doth protesth too much, let him have his day in court. Taking Butau’s case as a precedent, Zimbabwean jurisprudence affords Mr Muponda the platform.

Let me categorically state that I am not a fun of Gideon Gono. Like any patriotic Zimbabwean, I loathe Gideon Gono. However, I am not one to say because Gono has said and done evil things so everything he does is evil and every charge he makes is malevolent. It is apparent that Muponda is attempting to seek exoneration in the public court by exploiting Gono’s notoriety and insinuating that Gono’s charges against him are evil political mechanizations and, therefore, have no legal merit. We call such obfuscations smoke and mirrors. Such a line of defense will not work even in a village court.

Flashback: Mugabe Looks Gift Horse in the Mouth

2009-05-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

Mugabe Looks Gift Horse in the Mouth
Harare Tribune: 29th January 2009
by T. T. Tsanga

It was American Civil War General William Tecmuseh Sherman who said, and I quote; “To the winner belongs the spoils.” He was wrong. Sherman’s aphorism is not always an absolute certainty particularly when it comes to African politics. Mugabe’s behaviour following the historic March 2008 election in which he and his ZANU-PF were booted out of office is a prime example of the flaw in Sherman’s observation. The winner does not always hog all the spoils.

That Mugabe lost the election is beyond a shadow of doubt. The humiliating rejection by the Zimbabwean electorate notwithstanding, Mugabe wants all the spoils. After losing the election, a stark fact that he has acknowledged, Gushungo wants to hold onto key ministries to ensure the perpetuation of his grip on power as well as the immortalization of his beloved ZANU-PF. It is futile. Reports of Mugabe’s lack of decorum during the series of SADC meetings point not to arrogance. It was primal fear on display. The shadow of political death is slowly and ominously creeping upon Mugabe and his party. Vultures are circling above Mugabe, waiting and watching as they plan to pick off power, take Gideon Gono’s reported presidential ambitions as an example. These are people who want power just for the heck of it. The Zimbabwean people know it and do not want any part of it.

After winning the election under very tough conditions, the MDC is within its right to demand all the ministries it wants. That demand is in compliance with the decree and mandate of the Zimbabwean people. One man, Robert Mugabe, cannot and ought not be allowed to wilfully negate that mandate accorded by the people of Zimbabwe. He does not have the authority to nullify the will of the nation. The president of the Republic of Zimbabwe serves at the pleasure and consent of the Zimbabwean people. I have said this before and I will say it again; Zimbabwe is a REPUBLIC NOT A MONARCHY! In a republican government, the president is the servant of the governed not their master. Since Zimbabwe is a republic, Mugabe cannot be its potentate even by proxy. He may have come back from Mozambique with some misconception that he was a chief but he is most definitely mistaken if he is of that view.

As a servant of the people of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s custodianship of the nation on behalf of the people had to be appraised at regular intervals. The Zimbabwean people did just that. They reviewed Mugabe’s performance during his custodianship of the nation. The report card was not pretty. It read like a dispatch from a trench-warfare front. Mugabe and ZANU-PF have 29 years of shocking, mind-numbing and abject failure. It was as if they were on vacation for 29 years, as Sibangani Sibanda aptly put it. They are so incompetent they can never be trusted to run even a village grinding mill much less a ministry. On second thought I have to admit that I am mistaken, they will run the grinding mill alright, straight into the ground!

That is what Mugabe’s record during his tenure in office tells anyone who cares to make a casual inspection. He is very good at running things into the ground, especially those inherited from better performers than him. Tanonoka Joseph Whande of The Zimbabwe Times rightly described the manner in which Mugabe frittered away the economic legacy inherited from Ian Smith as an unparalleled act of betrayal.

On assuming power, ZANU-PF was hell bent on changing name plates on roads and building, and renaming towns, cities, mountains and rivers. It seemed as if independence was reduced into a mundane exercise of changing names and nothing else that required more physical and mental exertion beyond that. As prototypes of the ineptitude that is characteristic of ZANU-PF I will cite two examples. After renaming Andrew Flaming Hospital to Parirenyatwa Hospital, a once highly respectable institution was left to decay into a shell that it is now. The city of Harare had an efficient public transport in the form of Harare United Omnibus Company operating out of Belvedere. ZANU-PF took over the company and, overnight, the company was run into the ground through corruption and sheer incompetence. Similar disasters have been visited on everything that Mugabe has touched. The man has the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touchs instantly turns into a pile of worthless ash.

By reducing independence to an effortless exercise of renaming national landmarks and mismanaging thriving economic institutions thereafter, Mugabe and ZANU-PF are responsible for reducing his beloved revolution into a mockery. As Reason Wafawarova intimated, Mugabe’s inability to deal decisively with corruption is the genesis of the mockery. Sanctions have very little to do with it. They can wail all they want about sanctions until Hell freezes over but the fact remains unchanged, Mugabe and ZANU-PF are responsible for the Zimbabwean mess.

Ian Smith had sanctions but he found a way around them and kept the country running despite simultaneously dealing with a debilitating war, ditto the Afrikaner regime in Apartheid South Africa that used sanctions to become self reliant. Smith and Botha faced sanctions like men because they cared for the countries they were running whereas Mugabe chooses the path of least resistance, denouncing the imposition of targeted sanctions ad nauseum, because he does not really care.

Evidence on the ground condemns Mugabe for his incompetence and lack of care for his compatriots. Based on the evidence alone, he does not deserve to run anything beyond his family. If reports are to be believed, Mugabe’s own family does not really respect his abilities to preside over even a traditional burial ceremony in his own village. It is quite damning evidence pointing to the lack of respect he commands from those who know him best. Shouting down an uncle during the burial of a family member is incontrovertible proof that the man has little honour left and does not take that kindly. A person whose power is disjoined from respect lacks authority no matter the size and number of troops and death squads at his or her beck and call.

Mugabe, a man now bereft of honour even in his own village, has presided over an incompetent but eager-to-murder entity called ZANU-PF, does not deserve to run anything in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean people know this. Tsvangirai and the MDC are to be commended for trying to extending the olive branch to ZANU-PF and offering Mugabe some semblance of respectability to his hollow presidency. Tsvangirai and the MDC are too generous. Mugabe, true to form, has mistaken that magnanimity for weakness and spurned the offer. That is the problem.

Mugabe can ill afford to pick and choose what he wants and what crumbs to toss at the MDC. Beyond the ever-shrinking cover of military personnel, he has nothing else. Mugabe and ZANU-PF cannot bank on ordinary army grunts to protect them. If he believes that soldiers will slavishly obey his command then he is gravely mistaken. When ZANU-PF gave starving soldiers elephant meat, it pacified them for a while. A soon as they discovered that elephant meat did not taste anything like chicken, they went to Gono’s farm to borrow some in an act of blatant rebellion.

That is a very an ominous sign and if there are thinking people in ZANU-PF, they should be worried stiff. Soldiers preoccupied with looting shops, engaging in The Great Chicken Robbery and stealing maize and fertilizer are not going to fight anyone’s silly war meant to protect a few corrupt fools. I am afraid these acts of indiscipline are just a taste of what is to come. It is getting worse, with voodoo economist Gideon Gono right in the crosshairs.

It is Gono today but the next target of the fury of the soldiers is anyone’s guess. Clearly, Mugabe is in a pickle and he knows it. It is the very source of his intransigence. Constantine Chiwenga can puff out his chest and challenge the Yankee military machine to a fight but it is all wind. It is one thing to beat starving peasants and a totally different prospect facing a war machine that is the American military.

Mugabe is banking on Tsvangirai and the MDC to bail him out of the troubles he is facing from his own soldiers through what Eddie Cross rightly pointed out as the GNU Ponzi scheme. Tsvangirai and the MDC do not walk on water and their presence in Mugabe’s government is not going to solve the myriad of problems created by Mugabe. Mugabe and ZANU-PF are the source of the problems and it is inconceivable that they would be part of the solution. The problems facing Zimbabwe will only be solved by Zimbabweans.

The paramount point that should be impressed upon the arbiters of the Zimbabwean crisis is that the Zimbabwean people are not prepared to toil for a nation run by people who hoard donated fertilizer and seeds for personal gain. Tsvangirai and the MDC have the good will of the Zimbabwean people but Mugabe does not. When he had it, Mugabe abused it through his penchant for use of brute force and the unbridled corruption of his cartel. Without that good will, nothing will solve the problems, not even the gold bars in Fort Knox. The bad state of the world economy militates against Mugabe. No country is going to give him money, or let Gono use non-Zimbabwean currency, so that his corrupt underlings can salt it away and his wife can go on shopping junkets; the more the surprising aspect of ZANU-PF’s hard headedness. They are up against it. Mugabe and ZANU-PF are up to their ears in the hot soup they brewed. If they will not budge, the MDC should leave them to stew in it.

An incompetent, improvident and dishonourable man that looks a gift horse in the mouth should have that horse taken away from him on the spot. He is an ingrate and does not deserve the horse! Instead of offering him posts that he does not deserve and ministries that his party is incapable of running, Mugabe and his supine supporters in SADC have to be told that the MDC runs the whole shebang or the MDC will not run anything. That is the kind of clarity that is needed. Motlanthe can gnash his teeth all he wants but, as the hapless Thabo Mbeki put it, Zimbabwe is not a province of South Africa. Neither SADC nor Zuma has the right to impose Mugabe and ZANU-PF on the people of Zimbabwe. For presiding over a corrupt regime, Mugabe and ZANU-PF are the enemy of the people as wisely pointed out by Reason Wafawarova. Satan cannot man the Gates of Heaven.

Flashback: Conte's Cowards

2009-05-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

Conte's Cowards and Clowns: Will Our Zimbabwean Syndicate Learn Anything?

by Tut Tsanga; 25th December 2008
As a Zimbabwean, I cannot help but get gripped by the events unfolding in Guinea. Another evil African despot has bitten the dust and there is jubilation in the streets. Strange, is it not, that the death of a man who claimed people had given him an overwhelming mandate to rule over them has resulted in the very same people running into the streets as they excitedly toi toi in the dusty streets of the slums of Conakry, singing songs of joy while waving flags and palm fronds?

Lansana Conte, the criminally incompetent and widely despised dictator of Guinea is dead after unpardonably abusing the wonderful Africans of Guinea for almost a quarter of a century. Guinea is a country endowed with vast mineral resources, boasting more than a third of the world's known deposits of aluminium-source bauxite, diamonds, recently discovered oil, in addition to a rich and proud history. The people of Guinea are a hardworking lot that will go to incredible lengths to better their lives, like these kids studying under street lights - at least they have electricity and no raw sewage flowing in the streets of Conte's fiefdom, unlike a certain fiefdom in Southern Africa whose name I will not mention.

Like most African countries, God gave Guinea everything except sensible political leadership. Little wonder when African leaders die people celebrate, a phenomenon, until recent times, alien to our culture. When an evil man dies and people thank God the almighty, we should not accuse them of being out of cultural bounds.

I recall Lansana Conte saying some lame excuse to justify his seizure of power. It was in 1984 and I was in secondary school when aged uber African nationalist, Sekou Toure, died while receiving medical attention in New York. It was touching because I considered Sekou Toure a bona fide African anti-colonial hero instead of another pathetic but destructive African nationalist-turned-despot. Like his great-grandfather, the Guinean nationalist had stood up to the French who, in turn, vindictively destroyed everything, including toilets, they could not ferry back to France. Sekou Toure was a nationalist who had told the French to take their wares and shove them into part of their anatomy on which the sun never shines. It was music to my ears then. I was a young Communist Manifesto thumper, an ardent listener of Mugabe's radio addresses. In my teenage years little did I know that these terrible African nationalists are only good at crippling nations and keeping people fettered in poverty bonds.

Conte took over from the despotic African nationalist Sekou Toure. Unlike Sekou Toure, Conte was not a nationalist but a shameless opportunist. Like his fellow dictators, Lansana Conte thought of Guinea as his fiefdom and its entire natural resources God's gift to him and his cronies. Without surprise, he had an elaborate patronage system whereby foreign companies were given mining concessions, deals that greatly benefited Conte's cronies to the debilitating exclusion of everyone else. For his iniquities, Allah should toss Conte's soul into hellfire. It will make Iblis happy, he who rules and fans the fires of that terrible pond.

Frankly, as he stared death in the face, Conte was reduced to running a crime syndicate while using state apparati like the military, the secret services and judiciary to cower everyone. As old age and illness sucked life out of him, the vultures that comprised his patronage system picked up everything including power. Dictator Conte only provided political cover for the heads of the military services and their civilian handlers.

In 2007, Conte, described as a hopeless chain smoker, diabetic octogenarian, was under pressure to relinquish power. Despite worrying reclusiveness and rumours of his senility, the leeches that benefited from his presidency insisted he was still in charge. He was adept at organizing sham elections. Conte had a retinue of misguided and politically stupid women dressed in party dresses emblazoned with his putrid image singing his praises despite the obvious ineptitude of the man. Now, he would not have been a quintessential African dictator if he did not have these pathetic women praising him for non-existent governing skills, would he?

Like I stated in another op-ed, the patronage system has its limitations. It is like a feeding trough, as time progresses, more and more people who had initially benefited from the patronage system are pushed away until only the most powerful politicians and heads of military services are allowed to feast on the slops. Sooner or later, those pushed away will voice their displeasure and finally seek retribution. A decade ago, beneficiaries of Conte's patronage system should have seen the writing on the wall. When, in 1996, several thousand soldiers mutinied and ran riot in the streets of Conakry, it was a sign that positive change was needed. The denizens of the Guinean political order dismissed the soldiers as malcontents. Guinea has witnessed riot after riot after riot by disgruntled young soldiers. It is complete foolishness for any government to think it can pacify hungry and disgruntled young soldiers.

Conte and his mafia gang were doomed from that moment onwards. Conte had a Damocles sword hanging over his head. Immediately after rigging an election, his convoy was attacked by what he dismissed as unknown gunmen. For crying out aloud, these were not unknown gunmen, they were the same soldiers who he had dismissed as malcontents in 1996. When a cartel is presiding over a country that has an army with thousands of malcontents in its ranks, that cartel is bound to meet a terrible end.

The funniest thing is that Conte was painfully aware of his mortality, a coward that lived in absolute fear of death. His crime syndicate is proving to be just as cowardly. After Captain Camara seized power from the Conte crime syndicate, all the Conte Mafiosi were ordered to present themselves at Alpha Yaya Diallo barracks or risk hunted down like the rapacious wild animals they are. The consigliore of the cartel, Ahmed Tidiane Souare, tried to make some noise, probably from a cave in the Fouta Jallon mountains, to the effect that the Camara Junta was not in charge but the game was up. Yes sir, the once powerful crew is trooping its way into the Alpha Yaya Diallo barracks with tails tucked between legs.

Not only was Conte leading a pack of cowards but it is turning out they were more than that. They are a pathetic lot. Upon making his way into the camp, the previously vituperative prime minister is now singing a total different but very comical song. We have the circus clown, Ahmed Tidiane Souare, telling the previously unknown Captain Camara, and I quote; "We are at your complete disposal. We thank you once again for your wisdom, Mr President." When had Souare thanked Camara before? And, please pray tell while we are at it, what wisdom are we talking about here? Souare is begging for dear life, it seems. Anyway, it seems as if the army generals who had tried to puff out their chests in an act of defiance may have been put in their place by the no-nonsense young officers.

That is some remarkable transition for Captain Camara, id est moving from being part of an army previously derided as a pack of malcontents to a wise president. It is an equally massive climb down for the hapless Ahmed Tidiane Souare, who had insisted that he was in control. Of course, army tanks rumbling through the streets of Conakry and unbridled joy of the citizenry made a mockery of Souare's proclamations. It was just bluster. These are the cowards and clowns that were terrorizing the defenseless people of Guinea.

Africa is replete with these pests and the events in Conakry must make this festive season uncomfortable for the continent's other evil rulers and their acolytes. When the evil die, people will not mourn but flood into the streets to celebrate.

With all due respect and apologies to all the dogs, Conte's carcass deserves to be buried like that of a dog. Moreover, I do not wish his crew a merry Christmas. For only this one Yuletide, I gladly play the Grinch. No sane person will mourn if there is a summary chopping of the heads of all the Conte Junta fat-necked members who rigged elections and drove the country into half a century of poverty. It would send a very loud and clear message to all the continent's cowardly fat-necked criminals who live lavish life styles, gather funds to visit death upon the defenceless and consigning the living to breathing noxious air, drinking water teeming with cholera bacterium and eking out a miserable living through picking maize grain on roadsides.

Flashback: Mugabe Reduced to a Pitiful Beggar

2009-05-08T23:55:00.000-07:00

Mugabe Reduced to a Pitiful Beggar

First Published in The Harare Tribune
by T. Tut Tsanga; 11th January 2008
So, it is official, is it not? ZANU-PF’s Look-East Policy is dead. As Robert Gabriel Mugabe heads to Russia, begging bowl in hand, no one can doubt that it is a tacit acceptance that the foolish Look-East Policy has failed. That awful policy was doomed to fall flat on its face right from inception. As I have stated in a previous op-ed, the Chinese communists are not only über patriotic and ultra paranoid, they are also congenitally selfish and treacherous. Anyone in control of his or her mental faculties would have known that the Chinese are never to be trusted. Only lunatics would trust a nation that feeds its own children milk deliberately laced with poison. That is exactly what Mugabe and his collection of sycophants and psychopaths did, trust the Chinese. Folks, it is unvarnished lunacy.

The circle of lunatics surrounding Mugabe should have known that the Chinese would throw them out of the boat. When he tried to go to Beijing for the Olympics, Mugabe was told not to show up. He was as welcome as a skunk at that gathering. It is clear that the Chinese are tired of Mugabe and his syndicate. If the Chinese have intelligence officers in their Zimbabwean colony, the brazen public appearance of Chinese military officers at Gwanzura Stadium on the 18th April of 2008 tells us they have, it is possible that they have relayed the message to Beijing to let our Chinese communist colonial masters that they are betting on a dead horse.

The Chinese must know the extent of the internal rot that is eating away at the core of ZANU-PF. Yes, they may want the platinum, iron ore, precious metals replete in Zimbabwe and the newly discovered diamonds but they are also smart enough to know that Mugabe is now more of an unwanted burden than the tolerable nuisance they have brooked for years. He may not even be worth protecting anymore. Whatever Mugabe has to offer them, the Chinese have probably figured out the rewards are not worth a bucket of warm saliva. Even the pitilessly exploitative Chinese have their limits, you know. They can always cut new deals with governments with cleaner hands. There is no gain in propping up a regime in a terminal state.

To the Chinese, Mugabe and ZANU-PF were always as disposal as baby diapers – you use them once and discard them. With the Beijing Olympics over, China does not need to kowtow before an aging Third World tin-pot tyrant to get metals required for the construction industry. The Chinese demand for metals has plummeted since the end of the Olympics. This has been followed by a concomitant fall in the market value of metals.

That the Chinese have all but abandoned Mugabe is now quite apparent. With Zimbabwe desperate for help to fight cholera, our Beijing colonial masters donated a whooping U$5000 000! Yep, you got that right, China donated a grand total of half a million US dollars. Given the magnitude of the cholera crisis, the Chinese donation was not only an insult but the final nail into the coffin containing the carcass of the Look-East Policy.

Mugabe is in direr political straits than faced by the late despot and election-rigger, Lansana Conte, of the Republic of Guinea. Just as Conte’s terrible regime faced one mutiny after another from disgruntled army grunts, so has Mugabe’s miserable regime. When young Guinean soldiers faced starvation, they went on riot. Conte’s regime was in denial. The rioting soldiers were dismissed as malcontents. Instead of presiding over a government, in his last years, Conte was reduced to running a crime cartel under the pretext of being president. This is repeating itself in Zimbabwe where soldiers have gone on rampage only to be dismissed as unruly elements. Feeding them elephant meat does not help. The soldiers are not chained to their jobs and, sooner or later, will tire of the whole mess and leave.

Nothing lasts forever, as the Bible says. To everything there is a beginning and there is an end. There is no ubiquity in time for mortals or their hold on power or wealth. Formerly powerful empires have been created and crumbled. What luck would pathetic African dictatorships have? As soon as an opportunity to get rid of the criminal gang offered, Guinea's mafia was booted out. The foolish generals who had propped Conte were fired; probably the sickening kind that slavishly vows to salute only their benefactor. Aboubacar Sompare, among Conte's belligerent noise makers, of which ZANU-PF has many like Comrade Chinamasa, suddenly tucked his tail and started addressing the leader of the "malcontents" as Mr President and praising the young man for his wisdom.

Mugabe's regime is as doomed as Conte's cartel and, in light of that, the trip to Russia is a waste of time. It is nothing but a desperate flailing of the arms. As Hatirabwi Nathaniel Masikati has noted, ZANU-PF is very desperate. I do not see anything that Russia stands to gain from giving Mugabe U$2 – U$5 billion. Putin is more interested in finding investors for Russia rather than engaging in a worthless wild-goose chase in a far-flung decaying Southern African country. Mugabe may have mistaken Russian’s seemingly pro-Mugabe votes in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for support of what he is doing. Since he is badly advised by idiots like Brighton Matonga, Mugabe has drawn such a conclusion. It is erroneous. Spiking America for its encirclement of Russia with missiles is the primary, and most likely, the only motive of the Russian votes in the UNSC.

Russia does not need natural resources, contrary to Mugabe’s belief. It is a huge country and has just about every natural resource in great abundance. Right now the Russians are trying to make sure the price of crude oil is U$70 per barrel. If the price is lower than this, a huge gapping hole is left in the Russian budget, which would entail cutting funding for social but politically sensitive programmes. Every winter Russia closes its natural gas spigots to get money it is owed. Moreover, the fact that the ruble is in a freefall does not help Mugabe’s cause. Russia needs every ruble and may not have any spare change to throw into a beggar’s bowl.

If the hope is to use the Chiadzwa diamond fields as an incentive to attract Russian investors, someone needs to tell Mugabe not to waste his time begging for Russian aid. Any idiot with access to a computer and the internet will tell you that Russia is now the largest producer of diamonds ahead of Botswana. Mugabe’s advisors need to familiarize themselves with such minutiae but then, between running flower farms and selling diesel on the blackmarket, they do not have enough time for such trivialities. The trouble with Mugabe is that he always likes to surround himself with a cocoon of idiots, most of whom would not be able to tell the difference between a hole in the ground and the hole in their posterior.

Mugabe is a hostage to his own self-generated misfortunes. He is surrounded by functionally illiterate lunatics and crooks, none of whom really cares for the welfare of Mugabe and his family. They will not tell Mugabe the truth otherwise someone would have told him that running around the world to beg for help brings with it the putrid smell of mortification. A beggar has no dignity.

It is the younger members in ZANU-PF that have reduced Mugabe to a pitiful beggar. They are only too happy to see him humiliate himself before the eyes of the world because they think of Mugabe as a human shield against the righteous anger of the nation that seeks retribution for their transgressions. Mugabe needs to stop begging but the devious elements within ZANU-PF will not let it happen.

Clearly, Mugabe is at his wits’ end. Lewis Lapham saw this coming way back in 2001 and dismissed Mugabe’s rhetoric since it was completely divorced from reality. Mugabe had just given a firebrand speech at the United Nations Millennial Conference in which he characteristically denounced the hegemonic flexing of economic and military muscle by western governments and vowed to resist as a matter of principle. “Principles unsupported by the energies of a sustainable economy stand only at the whim of somebody else’ politics or money,” dismissively said Lapham in his book, Theater of War, Cleopatra’s Nose chapter. Running around to look for money vindicates Lewis Lapham’s pointed dismissal of Mugabe’s speech and grandstanding. It seems that no country wants to underwrite Mugabe's principles anymore.

Be that as it may, all this pitiful and ultimately futile begging is not necessary. Instead of wasting time launching bromides touting the ill-defined African Solutions for African Problems policy or the poorly formulated Look-East Policy, Mugabe ought to realize that there is only one clear and only viable alternative to his begging trips. He needs enough courage and manliness to cede power to Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC as mandated by the Zimbabwean electorate. It is the Zimbabwean Solution to the Zimbabwean Problem.

A transfer of power, however belated, will give Mugabe some degree of honour. Almost one year may have elapsed since the Zimbabwean poeple declared their quest to transfer the custodianship of the country into the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC but it is never too late to do the right and honourable thing. It is far better than begging. It does not take a n’anga to realize that.

I will conclude by reminding Gushungo that our forbearers left, for posterity, two admonishments instructive for this critical moment in our nation’s history, id est, kutonga madzoro – leadership is not a personal monopoly, it has to be relayed to others when the time comes – and, kumuzinda hakuna weko – the seat of power is nobody’s permanent residence. Members of your own family know this hence the reported attempt by your nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, to topple you from power. Some will tell you otherwise but these are the same people who have reduced you to a pitiful beggar and used, and are still using, you as a human shield for their selfish reasons.

Flashback: Tsvangirai Conscripted to Resurrect Political Cadavers?

2009-04-25T02:45:00.000-07:00

by T. Tut Tsanga; 3rd February 2009

When your enemy is destroying himself, do not interfere. With ZANU-PF tittering on the brink of collapse under its own weight, Morgan Tsvangirai and his national committee did just that; incomprehensibly offer a lifeline to Mugabe and his band of unrepentant subordinates. Boy, no wonder the geriatric dictator was in rapture after Morgan Tsvangirai pulled an Esau, selling his political birth right for a mere plate of beans.

Mugabe may have been thrilled but his young and hitherto arrogant lieutenants are still nervous the whole thing may come tumbling down. The crowd at Talk Zimbabwe have been chewing fingernails. Take Garikai Chengu’s opinion editorial as an example. Chengu is tremulous over the discontentment over the GNU by some MDC functionaries as well as some quarters of the new media. Comrade Chengu is afraid that the disgruntled faction may break away and form a "nefarious" opposition. Comrade Chengu’s choice of words shows a disturbing trend. It tells us that ZANU-PF will not change its ways despite the new dispensation that calls for such changes. Members of the MDC leery of working with ZANU-PF are evil, charges Comrade Chengu.

Comrade Chengu, it is your visceral vituperations that are at the very core of the distrust and disgruntlement of the MDC elements. Chengu and his ilk are terrified this may mark the inception of a new opposition, sponsored by the Western powers, and the continuance of ZANU-PF’s death march. It is hoped that such elements have the moral fortitude to refuse inevitable overtures from western sponsors, prayerfully posits Chengu. Is Chengu preparing to call such an opposition a puppet of the West should such an opposition emerge?

This reflexive showering of abuse at those who disagree with the ZANU-PF agenda shows that there is no scintilla of remorse within ZANU-PF. Like Comrade Chengu’s op-ed, all the words emanating from the ZANU-PF noise machine are laced with familiar venom. There is no contrition whatsoever coming from the demolishers of Zimbabwe. On the 30th of January 2009, Talk Zimbabwe had a mocking title which read, and I quote; “Bennett quietly slips into Zimbabwe.”

Contrast that piece of cheap ZANU-PF propaganda with the report in The Zimbabwe Times. Ntando Ncube tells us Roy Bennett was welcomed at the Harare International Airport by an immigration officer who, upon inspecting Roy’s passport, said, “Oh, it’s you Mr Bennett, welcome back.” As an exclamation point, Ntando’s piece has a picture of the Lion of Chimanimani fearlessly and confidently walking in the streets of Harare in broad daylight, with a smile to boot. It is a picture worth a thousand words. That is not the image of a cowardly man quietly slipping into the country. The insinuation being that Bennett slinked his way back into the country like a wanted fugitive. Of course Bennett is only a fugitive in the minds of scoundrels that attempt to hide behind a façade of false patriotism.

It is not just the venomous-tinged rhetoric coming out of the ZANU-PF propaganda noise machine that causes people like Masimba Musodza to register understandable pessimism. The action on the ground, as of this writing, points to the leopard not changing its spots but its inherent predilection for goat meat is proven immutable with each passing day since the co-option of the MDC into the Mugabe-Mutambara suicide machine. ZANU-PF supporter, Nyarai Chidemo, writing from the comfort of the Scottish Highlands, urges Zimbabweans to focus on rebuilding the ZANU-PF wreckage that is Zimbabwe. It is quite significant that her co-columnist at Talk Zimbabwe, Brett Nyakudirwa, says it is time to beat swords into ploughshares. Brett has to be commended for this very instructive call.

Since it is ZANU-PF that has all the swords, the onus is upon it to beat the swords into ploughshares. We do not have to wait for six months or however long Mugabe wants to assess the sincerity of ZANU-PF. Mugabe and Mutambara can show the world they are serious by acting right now. I suggest the following;

Free all the activists in detention. Up until Jestina Mukoko and all the activists under illegal detention are released without any delay or preconditions, the reservoirs of discontentment will get deeper. Ms Mukoko and company are political prisoners;
Drop the trumped up charges against Tendai Biti;

For championing the abduction of well-meaning citizens, Didymus Mutasa must be severely punished if wary elements are to be reassured;

Unless ZANU-PF Chairman, Comrade John Nkomo, immediately releases all the farming equipment to the peasants for whom said equipment was acquired, there is no reason to believe that Mugabe has suddenly become sincere;

Constantine Chiwenga must publicly account before the nation what happened to the donated maize seed and fertilizer the distribution of which was entrusted into his hands. Chiwenga, as expected, failed to reign in thieving soldiers and ZANU-PF members of parliament. The nation will face starvation despite the brisk rain and availability of resources. Chiwenga must be held accountable. He must be fired from the Armed Forces of Zimbabwe if Mugabe and Mutambara’s overtures of unity for the good of the country are to be taken seriously;

Emerson Mnangagwa reportedly presided over the murderous JOC junta in the aftermath of the March 2009. He must be brought to book because he is likely to do it again based on his reported record in the Gukurahundi Genocide;

Practitioner of voodoo economics, chief priest Gideon Gono, must be fired and sent to the knackery for stupidly thinking that looping off zeroes and printing worthless paper money will revive the economy and provide funding needed to take care of HIV-AIDS, cholera, paying school teachers etc. As long as Gono grows fatter and fatter as RBZ governor, with Mugabe’s approval, no one is bound to believe or accept the GNU. There are signs of Gono doing as he pleases and a sure sign that the GNU is doomed anyway;

Those who ordered and carried out the murder of Tonderai Ndira and those who perished during the post March 2008 Genocide must be identified and punished. People of good conscience cannot permit criminals that murdered Zimbabweans in cold blood and left their bodies in the wilderness so that wild animals and birds could pick off flesh from their remains go unpunished. It is an abomination and the guilty parties must pay according to the mores of our customs – endai munoripa ngozi dzevanhu vamakaponda asi vasina chavakakutadzirai! Zvenyu zvekuti wafawarova inhema chete chete, mucharidza fengu mukasaripa;

ZANU-PF ethnic cleansers, from Gukurahundi to the Cholera Plague weapon of mass destruction, must be hauled from the corridors of power, put on trial not at The Hague but the site of their crimes and punished to the fullest extent of the law. These characters are reportedly filthy rich and can afford to make monetary compensation to the families of their victims.

The country knows the identity of all the wicked people behind the Gukurahundi Genocide, Murambatsvina and Mavhoterapapi Ethnic Cleansers and those who have used the cholera plague as a biological weapon of mass destruction to farther the series of ethnic cleansing agenda. We should think of the elite that have emerged as a result of Mugabe’s patronage not as African nationalists to be admired continentwide but as a new ethnic group not restrained by any traditional strictures or rule of law from committing the most abhorrent atrocities on fellow compatriots. Only from that perspective can we begin to understand why the same cast of characters, our own wabenzi, has been deeply involved in all acts of ethnic cleansing.

Comrade Mugabe and Comrade Guseni Mutambara have been conscripted into accommodating Tsvangirai, a man both of whom loathe with a passion, by dire circumstances on the ground. What about the fate of the ethnic cleansing wabenzi? Mutambara has nothing to say about them. All he wants is money to help him consolidate power and it is not looking good on that front. Like the doofus he is, Comrade Guseni gave away the game at Davos. After spending an inordinate part of 2008 lecturing the West, the tactless doofus demanded that the very same West provide money to buy food for Mugabe’s increasingly desperate soldiers who are starving in the barracks. These are the same goons that thoughtlessly went on rampage, burning crops last year, just after the epic rejection of Mugabe from power and the complete humiliation of Comrade Guseni in Zengeza West.

Like a Pentecostal preacher, Comrade Guseni Mutambara had a few choice words for Gordon Brown and Barrack Obama, the only people likely to inject life into the comatose country that is Zimbabwe. Arthur, how can you be so stupid? First you rip out a sermon tearing apart your would-be benefactors and then pass the collection plate. The only thing worse than a choosing beggar is a congenitally insolent beggar. By barracking likely donors at every opportunity, no country will fund Comrade Guseni’s devious ascendancy to power and the man knows it.

Let us face it, ZANU-PF in tandem with SADC blackmailed Tsvangirai and the MDC into bailing Mugabe out of his troubles. Mugabe and ZANU-PF resolved not to let any help be given to people dying of cholera as long as they did not get the so called government of national unity. Bona has the luxury to go to a Chinese school but no other Zimbabwean child was be permitted to go to school as long as Bona’s father was not getting rescued from his follies. Education is not a privilege but a right. Anyone who threatens to destroy the nation’s children by sending soldiers to shut down schools is nothing but a treasonous snake. Snakes are not very pleasant creatures. The sticking point remains; who will fund the revival of Zimbabwe?

Mugabe and Mutambara want Tsvangirai to go out to beg for money, hat in hand. The success of the SADC-mediated Mugabe-Mutambara political Ponzi scheme hinges on monies generated using Tsvangirai as their ATM card. This presupposes that the sources of the much-needed money are stupid enough not to see the Ponzi scheme for what it is; a means to resurrect the post-rigor mortis political cadavers of Mugabe and Mutambara. It is going to be a tough sell.

Obama is struggling to get his economic stimulus package through and Mr Brown’s treasury will have to borrow £300 billion to stave off an economic depression. South African President Motlanthe promised to help rebuild Zimbabwe but this is the kind of a joke that could make a cow laugh. How can the ANC do for Zimbabwe what it has failed to do in South Africa? With member countries like Malawi bracing for trouble and non-members like Kenya facing starvation, SADC is quickly realizing the Herculean and futile task of helping Mugabe retain power and help him rebuild the country at the same time.

Thus helping Zimbabwe, as belligerently demanded by political cadaver Mutambara, is looking like a pipe dream with each ticking second. The political cadavers will inevitably be buried, as noted by Professor Makumbe, and people of good will hope Tsvangirai is not the proverbial stupid fly that goes into the grave with said cadavers. The success of the resurrection of the cadavers depends on the sincerity of Mugabe, which is as high as the belly of a snake. If Mugabe behaves true to form, and there are signs points to that according to the Bloomberg report, Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to join Mugabe and Mutambara will increasingly look more like a capitulation than pragmatism.