Grace must get off her high horse

By James Maridadi

Picture this for a PhD thesis.

Topic: From Weevils to Gamatox and back to Weevils — seesaw of political comedy. An analysis of theZimbabwean presidency 1980-2014.

Student: Grace Marufu.

Supervisor: Unknown.

The Zanu PF circus has taken a well-deserved respite, thanks to President Mugabe who never misses an opportunity to flee urine-stenched streets of the once jewel of Africa that he has single-handedly transformed into a rubbish dump sight.

He was off to Italy for the Pope’s beatification.

A circus must typically have some entertainment value, feats of skill, a travelling troupe and for completeness there must be clowns in the travelling party.

Luckily, Dr Grace has several of these clowns readily available.

She will not go beyond her husband’s Cabinet. They gleefully avail themselves for that purpose.

Bald-headed and silver-haired men, sitting in the scotching sun of Rudhaka Stadium, roaring dutifully with laughter, to a medley of old half-funny jokes, dished, some at the expense of the clowns, by an unwitty hostess.

Patronage is expensive to men’s dignity.

Any Zimbabwean citizen, 40 years old or more and literate has the three attributes considered sufficient by our Constitution to be president.

So anyone from the most senior in the land to the lowest on the food chain has a constitutional right to harbour presidential ambitions.

Now one wonders why this hullabaloo by Dr Grace that so and so is trying to succeed the president as if it were a crime.

Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans and not for the exclusive leadership of the Mugabe family.

Robert Mugabe became president in 1977 after party members realised that he was the most senior party cadre available and yet 34 years on it has suddenly become treasonous to want to succeed him.

It must, however, be stated here as a matter of public record that it is not a crime to want to succeed Mugabe and that when he goes he will certainly not be missed at least not by the suffering masses of the country who blame him, and correctly so, for single-handedly authoring the hunger we are enduring.

Grace herself is harboring presidential ambitions and it must be stated, for the record, that she possesses the three attributes stated elsewhere in this installment and as such she is within her constitutional rights.

Whether or not she has the qualities for the job is a discussion for another day and the circus referred to above, luckily gives us a glimpse of her leadership capabilities or lack thereof.

Is a First Lady allowed to take advantage of her position and lay claim on the presidency?

In corporate strategy, it is called leveraging and in the book Competitive Advantage of Nations, leveraging is the art of turning comparative into competitive advantage.

Dr Grace is certainly leveraging but the million dollar question is how has she fared?

The end game of what she has started is visibly far beyond her comprehension as betrayed by her own body language.

She is dealing with shrewd schemers, masters of political machinations, people who are never in the habit of doing things for anyone.

Whatever they do, they do it for themselves. Just a few weeks ago, the head of State called them weevils; today they have penned a “master plan” that has to all intents and purposes torn the revolutionary party right through the middle.

They selected the best pawn for the game, an unsophisticated first lady whose political grounding and social intellect precludes capacity to see the bigger picture.

Who, in her right frame of mind threatens to “dump” a constitutional Vice President? Using what authority? It can only be a vulnerable former stenographer married to a 91-year-old well beyond the twilight of his presidency.

Dr Grace’s charade of the past week, never mind the comic relief that it provided, will subject her and her family to some of the most savage ridicule of her husband’s long and illustrious political career.

In Shona they say, “Inozvikanga nemafuta ayo” deep-frying oneself in your own fat.

This is usually in reference to pigs which have a lot of fat such that there may be no need to add cooking oil when frying pork.

She has put the country on a knife edge by making it public that the president and his deputy are at each other’s throats.

This is bad for investment in a country whose economy is already on its knees.

There will be more capital flight from Zimbabwe in the next few weeks leading to Zanu PF’s elective congress in December 2014 than there has been in the nine months starting January 2014 courtesy of cancerous hallucinations by a political novice being used by unscrupulous schemers.

She is given to erroneously believing that her husband is owed by this country and that the lives of Zimbabweans revolve around the Mugabes.

She rebukes people in front of multitudes for not availing themselves for her whirlwind tour.

The Mashonaland East provincial youth chairman Lucky Kandemiri was harangued publicly.

His crime being failing to participate in the heavily publicised Amai “meet-the-people” rallies across the nation.

Even the excuse that he was working could not stop the barrage of insults.

“Stop it! stop it! Stop lying. Hauverenge mapepa here munhu akasvika kudaro. (Don’t you read newspapers a well groomed person like you.)” Provincial chair Ray Kaukonde was not spared either.

He got a dressing down from his strong Mudzi accent to his lack of physical vertical integration. One can only admire his guts to remain coolly seated and smiling sheepishly.

“In 2008, I nearly punched him.”

This was in reference to a closed door meeting at State House where Kaukonde had apparently gone to plead his allegiance to the president.

She got animated right there and went on an uncontrollable tirade.

Interestingly, Dr Grace is a bad listener. When Kaukonde got an opportunity to speak, he spoke about how badly the economy is performing and how the ruling party is yet to deliver on its pre-election promises.

Essentially, he was showing the first lady his middle finger.

Now, according to the State-controlled media, the misfortune is knocking fast and furious at the door of war veterans’ leader Jabulani Sibanda.

He will be told what he already knows. That he never fired a shot during the liberation struggle as the war ended as soon as he came out of training.

He will be cut to size and let us see if the warrior in him will come out and say “madam enough”.

As all this drama is unfolding, I am reminded of Margaret Dongo who once referred to all Zanu PF men in Parliament as Mugabe’s wives.

Not one person can muster guts enough to even raise a meek concern and yet it is evident that quite a few in the rank and file of the party are annoyed beyond measure.

Dr Grace must get off her high horse and walk the streets of Harare and see the grinding poverty that is all over the place.

There are more tomato vendors at the corner of Julius Nyerere Way and Robson Manyika Avenue today than there were vegetable vendors in the whole of Harare in 1985.

The mother of a nation is more concerned with alleviating hunger more than she is concerned with her husband’s political longevity.

Other nations are talking of how best to tackle Ebola which has devastated some African countries and yet as unprepared as we are for the virus, we have the pleasure to spend resources on meaningless witch hunts all to preserve the power of one family.

The country, meanwhile, is suffering unprecedented hemorrhaging as a result of unmitigated corruption and leadership incompetence.

Like an aeroplane, the nation is airborne, the pilot is fast asleep on the controls and the cockpit door is locked from inside.

How do you salvage such a situation. Soon the machine will run out of gas and it will fall out of the sky and kill everyone on board, the pilot included.

This is how I describe our situation.

Now we have a supposed technical advisor to the pilot striding up and down the isles, chastising restive passengers of not doing enough to assist the beleaguered captain.

How do we help a foolhardy pilot who believes he has it all under control when it is clear he is heading for disaster.

What we need is not divine intervention. God helps those who help themselves.

Silly is a man who goes up a mountain to pray and fast after they have accidentally cut their finger.

God gave us the wisdom to invent bandages and betadine.

Administer those and stop bothering the Almighty with a silly prayer for miracles to stop bleeding and pain and stop accusing your brother’s wife of causing the accident.

Do the right thing at the right time.

I rest it for now.