Tongai Tivone: Mantra of the Demented

By Tinomudaishe Chinyoka

When Rush Limburgh said, soon after Obama was elected the first time “I hope he fails”, he was attacked by most people, even on his side because, you see, Obama failing meant America failing, and one can’t be a patriot as Monsieur Limburgh claims to be, and hope that their country should fail.

Only those suffering from dementia can claim in one breath that they love their country and will do anything for its people and then, with the next breath, express words that mean the exact opposite.

Now we know that this disease is not confined to the lunatic fringe of the American Republican Party, but that it also extends to the opposition in Zimbabwe.

Following their loss in the harmonized elections of July 2013, the MDC’s true colours are coming out and, unlike those of the peacock, the colours we have been seeing are not pretty.

Those that woke up on July 31st dreaming dreams of grandeur were soon frothing on the mount throwing around unfounded allegations, incoherent irrelevancies masquerading as argument, unsponsored critiques of things immaterial, as well as mundane observations masked as important discourse, all in the hope that some of that mud might stick on their intended target: the victors.

Of course, that was before the circus of their project started unravelling, with internecine warfare that can old be best explained by resort to a well worn phrase: it is a dog-eat-dog out there.

Sadly for them, the people of Zimbabwe saw through the paucity of their JUICE, and continue to expose them for what they really are: fly-by night political snake-oil salesmen bitter about their failure to wrestle political office for their personal gain and out to damage the ship of our nation’s destiny lest it might anchor in still waters without their help.

Denied their chance to steer the ship onto dangerous waters, they showed that they did not care about the country, as evidenced by their current wars for position instead of focusing on Mr and Mrs Jogn Q Public. But, we digress.

Upon realising that they had lost, (and that aside from mere asides when they were otherwise unoccupied their sponsors did not really care), the MDC resorted to a dangerously irresponsible doctrine: that they were the only party capable of steering the nation to still waters and no-one else could.

This is more than caring about their own pockets, which no doubt they do, otherwise Tsvangirai would already be in Strathaven or Houghton Park where he has houses and not the $3m mansion that he is buying for his personal use at a concessionary price.

Nothing wrong with buying a house you used as a civil servant mind you, unless you have spent the last two decades telling people that you will stop that very thing of course.

Their doctrine of the deluded, in terms of which only they have the answers, was  encapsulated in a very small phrase: Tongai tovone! That became some kind if refrain from the losing fringe, a sort of rallying call that said in two words the worst possible thing one can say about their country.

You see, while the fortunes of the new government have so far shown that they do not depend in any shape or fashion on the petulance demonstrated by ‘tongai tivone“, it does make one recoil with revulsion that the very people that were clamoring for our votes yesterday have been waiting, rubbing their hands with glee at the false expectation that we, as a nation, will fail.

To demonstrate: they went on social media excoriating the President’s cabinet on the basis of age, without acknowledging that the very same ‘old’ hands that they denigrated had just given them a drubbing in the last elections. If the ability to win elections is no evidence of political ability, what is?

You go into a contest with some people, lose to those people, then spend your time telling the very same people that voted for them that the victors are not fit to rule because they are too old? Do you think perhaps that when people cast their votes they did not know about their age? When all you did during the campaign was wave silly little cards with numbers showing these people’s very ages on them?

And since when, in our culture, did we start to look at age as a disease? Is it not the case that wisdom comes with old age?

You see, when people go into politics, they should do so to serve the public. Not for the mansions that they will get as a severance package when their dreams fail to come true, not for the trips they will make to London ‘to express solidarity for international effort in Syria’ (like Tsvangirai did) when half the population of Syria couldn’t point out Zimbabwe on the map and the other half wouldn’t give a toss about us.

So, when they go around issuing statements on Syria instead of going to our heroes acre to bury our liberators, issuing even more statements about how sanctions did not affect any part of our economy, we know that this is all part if a bankrupt agenda to see the country fail.

The domain of politics must be inhabited only by people that have the national interest in their hearts, not nefarious hangers on with no hope of a career elsewhere and that see political office as their only pathway to renown.

Of course, this was before their own civil war sent Tsvangirai of a whirlwind tour of the country to shore up support and demonstrate to any potential coup plotters that he, and not anyone else, has the public.

People going across the country claiming to listen to people while simultaneously sending minions armed with zero intelligence and sense to go after every critique of their recent actions and spew vitriol on all objective assessments of their failures are not fit to criticize anyone or suggest that those who have run the country so far somehow cannot anymore. What is their own track record?

This is the same party that failed to condemn Roy Bennett when he claimed that Vice President Nkomo should not have been buried at Heroes Acre, and proceeded to say some very bad things about the late hero.

The same party that thinks it is appropriate to call a ‘victory celebration’ to congratulate themselves on losing four elections in a row. I guess it is no wonder that they do not know the achievements that the same people that they now condemn as too old have brought in our country, despite all the machinations of the West and their tea-boys.

Ask any modern Zimbabwean musician who they credit for their success and they will be daft if they do not point to Prof Jonathan Moyo and his 75% local content policy at ZBC which saw the ‘Corruption at the Heart of the Nation’ (or what that ‘Station at the Heart of the Nation’, I forget now?) start promoting local talent.

Now, is that not the same person that is in the cabinet? I will not speak about the free education that has produced the most educated generation of Africans ever, or the free clinics that sprouted everywhere after 1980 and allowed some of us a chance to live! The right to look at ourselves with pride and say we are Zimbabweans. Not Rhodesians, but Zimbabweans!

Did the IMF not cut out balance of payments support because, as they put it, our President lacked the ‘political will’ to stop free primary education and free clinics? Of course, ‘political will’ to these imperialists meant forcing people to stomach whatever it is that they were selling, which our liberators decided they would not do.

Do we not now have the highest literacy rate in all of Africa? Did that come from trees, or was it not the same people now running the country who brought that about without the shackles of a useless coalition that they had to endure over the last five years? Before suggesting that other people are too old to run a country, or that they somehow will not manage to continue to do so, you must have some support for that suggestion.

So, where is their record? Aside from the stupid suggestion that our country had just $200 at one point (please!), what else is it that the last Finance Minister is remembered for again? Even his colleagues, now that they are no longer talking, fall over each other to tell us what little he did, and for good reason.

Does anyone recall what the last Prime Minister did aside from going around offering to marry anyone and anything with a pulse? Did the ICT Minister do anything to bring about broadband to Mberengwa, Madziwa or Sanyati, or did he spend his time going about giving long winded speeches couched in unnecessary verbosity to compensate for shortcomings in ……what?, while at the same time wiki-leaking stories like a sieve about his own leader and colleagues?

I don’t know about everyone else, but I would rather have the people that sacrificed everything and fought for our liberation running our country, rather than someone that stayed behind to serve tea to his white ‘betters’ and is infamous for nothing aside from falling over after being overwhelmed by the bad breath of a questionable ‘prophet’ during an exorcism in Nigeria.

I mean, does it not to go show the hubris in the man: he will not attend Masowe eVaPostori in Bocha, but will go to Nigeria for his demons to be cast out? Not because he thinks the people of Bocha are not good enough mind you, even a child born last year could cast some of this man’s demons, but the man loves to travel by air! I bet if they built a runway in Marange he will finally see fit to go to the prophets there. By air.

So, while they travel far and wide to see charlatans and other dreamers, to be told more dreams about how they will rule Zimbabwe, signing ‘tongai tovone’ until the cockerels sing in chorus with them at dawn, the true liberators of our country soldier own against the weight of illegal sanctions and Western regime change agendas, certain of the outcome: our country will not be colonised again. Thanks to the wise voters who turned out in their numbers to say “VaMugabe tongai zvenyu!‘

A long time ago, those that colonised us decided that we were too primitive to own our own country’s resources. Their courts,  when asked who owned the land in Zimbabwe, stated that we were too primitive to know that we owned our own land. The party that is running the country today won our freedom to own our property and the right to take our land back.

The colonizers built nice areas in our country, using our resources, then decreed that we couldn’t live there except as servants. The party that is running the country today won our freedom of movement and the right to live wherever we pleased. The colonizers passed laws prohibiting us from gathering in groups and banned our nationalist parties.

The party that is running the country now won our freedom of association and the right to form parties. Even misguided ones like those that manage to lose elections four elections in a row and still ‘celebrate’ their ‘victory’. The colonizers said that we were second class citizens, in our own country.

The party that is running our country today won our freedom and right to be equal before the law. From the wise voter that sees right through the haughtiness of Roy Bennett and his sanctimonious piffle to the dearly demented souls going around from pillar to post looking for answers about how they lost, we are all equal.

Of course, now that they are at each other’s throats, those in Zanu PF could be excused for saying in glee: ‘rovanai tivone’.  Except they won’t, having better things to do. Like running the country for one.

So, if I may ask, what is it about the the new government that deserves the insinuation that when we say ‘tongai tivone‘, we are suggesting that somehow, things will go bad?

Because they won’t.

Tinomudaishe Chinyoka, PhD Student, Former President of UZ Students Union, Member, Zanu PF UK.