By Tino Chinyoka
Okay, seriously, who needs this aggravation? If I were Morgan Tsvangirai, I would have packed it in a long time ago, called it a day and retired to some villa somewhere. Sipping some drinks with little umbrellas and watching as it burns while listening to Thomas Mapfumo crooning: ‘Musha wenyu wamaicheme, hoyo waita mamvemve…’
You start a political party, pull together a country that had known only the Chipinge based Ndonga as an opposition (whose MP could go a whole Parliament with nothing but an inaudible interjection to his name in Hansard), and give people something worth ululating about, and what do they do? Nothing.
Some of them do not even bother to vote, but sit around braais and other pursuits moaning about this not working and that not being done properly and how Chematama is to blame. Seriously?
And the betrayal is not limited there, no. The very people you call your assistants and trusted lieutenants tell you, oh, we know this guy from Israel called Ari Ben Menashe, he can help us market the party in the USA, as if it needed any marketing. I mean, how many voters has Mudede registered in downtown Chicago recently? Seriously.
But, being one to trust others, doing unto others as one would like done unto you, he goes along with the plan, only to find that it is a set up, and suddenly one is facing treason charges. And the friends? Their charges mysteriously dropped, running around visiting everywhere and saying nothing about this capital crime.
Is it a coincidence that they also got those A2 farms from Zanu PF before the MDC was formed? Or that they seem to benefit from lack of specific targeting at rallies? I mean, we have seen Morgan with blood on his face, Chamisa with blood on his face, Biti with blood on his face, Kwinjeh with blood on her face but, please, tell me if you can, when shall we see Ncube’s blood?
I mean, seriously, did we not have that election in 2000 when everyone and his cat knew that Zanu PF was going out, really going out, even after they stopped people from voting in towns by limiting the number of polling stations, and then the very same lieutenant that brought the calamity that was Ari Ben Menashe was caught fleeing the country at the Botswana border? I mean, who flees the country when you are about to win power?
Who does that, seriously?
Then, when you eventually expose him for the power hungry backstabber that he is, and refuse to be expelled from the party and he goes and forms his little version somewhere (where he has no courage to lead but imports some robotics professor to do so, with tragic consequences), do people thank you or say ahh, he was right? No. Hee, Morgan is stupid, hee, Morgan is not wise, hee, Morgan should have done this or that. Seriously?
Wife probably murdered in broad daylight, but knowing that no words of recrimination will bring her back, one makes a conciliatory statement. Does one get credit? No. Hee, Morgan is stupid, hee Morgan was precipitous, hee he should have blamed Zanu PF for the accident, hee, Morgan is stupid, he should have made political capital out of it. Really?
Your own wife, mother of your children, lifelong friend, paragon of virtue and loved by everyone, must be made political fodder? Seriously?
Alone, drifting from one stolen victory to another, forlorn in a land of plenty, one finds company deferential and hard to trust. Like most men, hey, like all men, one finds comfort where one can, but does it stay there? No.
Various people armed with their own agendas suddenly make it their business to check on whom one dates. Talk to a woman’s parents one afternoon and suddenly you are accused of being married. I mean, seriously.
How many people would be married to twenty-eleventeen women here if all it took to be married was a visit to one’s putative in-laws? Press statements issued, hee I married Morgan, hee see me I was married by Morgan, hallelujah see me I married Morgan, praise God Morgan married me. Morgan married my mum, Morgan married my village.
People suddenly becoming very interested in everything Morgan, like suddenly the world and its relative are incapable of lying. Not even one person coming forward to say, ummm, some of this looks like lies.
I mean, how many people do you know get stopped from getting married on the say so of a former lover with no marriage certificate to show? Since when did a civil marriage require proof that the day you visited another woman’s home a marriage did not take place? Well, you guessed it, since Morgan.
But, you soldier on. You trust that things are on track, that people finally say what they mean and mean what they say. Then suddenly, out of the blue, Mugabe pulls a Machiavelli. Sponsoring NGOs to ‘sue’ himself so that he gets what he wants, pulling the wool over courts and judges by putting forward very weak defences, and suddenly you are the one left suggesting that court orders should be ignored? Seriously, how does one cope?
You campaign against this judgement, and suddenly every closet intellectual and his pet wants to lecture you on how every Zimbabwean, whether they be called Jealousy Mawarire or not, have a right to get their day in court.
Even constitutional professors with reputations for intelligence suddenly applaud the court for ruling ‘within the spirit’ of the constitution! Seriously? We are to ignore the blatant manipulation of the Court and the law because some spirit says yes?
So we have spent the last twelve years at the NCA campaigning for a spirit? Seriously?
Even when SADC forces Mugabe to back down, his Minister of Justice runs to the court with a losing case in search of a dustbin, just so that they can say they tried. I mean, in this day and age, even a grade 7 child and his goat knows that you do not go to a court in any country and say, hee, we were told by these foreigners at this party we went to that we cannot do things like this or that here, so please listen to them foreigners. Seriously?
But, what does he do? Seriously, what is he on? I would like what he is smoking. Instead of packing it in, instead of giving up because that is the logical thing to do, he files a better application.
Always fighting for people that never say thank you, defending a constitution that offers him no protection from beatings, bleeding and swollen but never appreciated, people calling him names, insulting his intelligence, questioning his motives, denigrating his family life and generally making fun of him.
Typical. Just goes to show, Morgan Tsvangirai is so not very clever. If I were him, I would have packed it in… called it a day and retired to some villa somewhere, sipping Mai Tais and some such drinks with little umbrellas and watching as Zimbabwe burns while listening to Thomas Mapfumo crooning: ‘Musha wenyu wamaicheme, hoyo waita mamvemve…’
Tino Chinyoka is a respected Zimbabwean lawyer and writes from the UK
