By Tanonoka Joseph Whande
First off, South Africa must understand that it is not comedy when Mugabe is killing people! South Africa looks down on other African countries in a manner that says “we are the best”.
Their president is Jacob Zuma, one of the continent’s dumbest and stupidest presidents.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is the most evil and most cunning: that is how Mugabe gets morons like Zuma and his cabinet laughing at none jokes.
For unexplained and annoying reasons, fellow Africans always wonder why Zimbabweans think that they have problems in their country when they have “a brilliant leader like Robert Mugabe”.
Many people on the high rungs of social, political and economic strata ask me the very same stupid questions that can only be answered by Zimbabwe itself.
I have always warned people not to listen to Mugabe but to pay attention to Zimbabwe itself because the answers are there everywhere.
Read Zimbabwe.
Take a look at Zimbabwe.
Give a discriminating eye at our country and, from there, you will get the answers you need, free from political or personal embellishment.
What I do not understand is how Africa views and judges Zimbabwe because standards used against us are not the same as those being used against other countries.
We are resilient and tolerant and that allows for our oppression.
Mugabe is world famous because of our tolerance.
We have become famous more for what we were under colonial regimes than what we are under the one African leader we have known as we continuously hear ourselves being referred to as “once the bread-basket of Africa”.
In our schools, colleges and universities, we hosted students from all over Africa and beyond. Even today, so many from South Africa, Botswana and other SADC countries are in our schools.
Rightfully, Africa and the world pin us down to an era when we had inherited what departing colonial governments had left for us.
While the Portuguese in Mozambique took everything with them (including toilet chambers, seats and cisterns) when the country became independent, colonialists left Zimbabwe with almost everything intact.
From schools and education, hospitals, agriculture, transport, industry, communications and all else, all was in place.
All we needed to do was to maintain what we had inherited from the colonial government, not necessarily improve them but just maintain the systems left in place.
We failed to do that. We are still failing.
Robert Mugabe, a master at deflecting important issues away from himself, was in South Africa last week. It was sad to see the press, along with some cabinet ministers, including President Jacob Zuma himself, joining in laughter over sad issues of importance.
Mugabe tried to take South African comedian Trevor Noah’s mantle, joking and making people laugh about issues of serious importance to Zimbabweans, let alone South Africans who were incited into violence by old, out of touch tribal moronic “kings” against people of other nationalities.
As the South Africans laughed, did they ever wonder about the abuse of political opponents who are being abused in Zimbabwe, something they have a problem tolerating in their own country?
Why did they not bother to find out about a still missing fellow journalist in Zimbabwe?
Did they care about the millions of Zimbabweans facing hardships in South Africa or they were satisfied by Mugabe thanking South Africa?
How far did the South African media go in finding out what the so-called “strengthening of bi-lateral relations” means when South African business is camped in Zimbabwe and has got us by the balls?
Two weeks ago, Mugabe was worrying about how to fund a SADC Summit that is due and Zimbabwe was to approach South Africa for financial assistance.
Both South Africa and Botswana have given Mugabe millions before and the situation is still hopeless and getting worse.
Two weeks ago, Mugabe visited Ethiopia, among other countries, and Zimbabweans resident in Ethiopia were asked to contribute at least US$50 each to host Mugabe who then went on to appeal to Zimbabweans in the wider Diaspora to send money home to relatives.
But we know who really needs money from those heavily-taxed remittances.
Mugabe spouted rubbish about Tony Blair, for goodness sake.
Wasn’t this kind of idiocy apparent to news people? Were they not aware that they were being led away from important issues?
Mugabe wants you to laugh when he insults other people and reporters are always diverted from major issues because this man has major questions to answer.
But they gobbled it all up.
They all laughed when Mugabe talked about Cecil John Rhodes being buried in Zimbabwe while South Africans are demanding the removal of his statue.
Mugabe taunted the South Africans but they did not notice; they were all in awe of this man and were busy laughing.
The importance of history is that it belongs to no one but the nation.
Heroes are heroes because they conquered someone under the most acute of circumstances. The conquered are always worthy opponents who made our heroes by being defeated by them.
What is Zanu-PF, or Mugabe, if you care, without Ian Smith and his predecessors?
Who is Nelson Mandela without the apartheid presidents?
Would we be talking about Nehanda or Kaguvi if we do not acknowleged those they fought against and won?
The winners and the losers are all part of our history and they deserve prominence to remind us of our past.
History is not politics and cannot be negotiated.
Heroes are no heroes unless we show the people the forces they conquered against all odds.
We must not repeat history but we must learn from it.
The giggling media in South Africa, its cabinet ministers, Jacob Zuma, rebel-rouser Julius Malema must all understand that destroying historical reminders is much more dangerous than the nonsense they spout tirelessly every day.
A statue of Nelson Mandela is worthless unless we know the more powerful people he defeated. People like Julius Malema should not be expected to understand this because their depth of knowledge is finger-deep; they are one-issue rebel rousers.
Back to “my” president.
It is not funny that Mugabe finds humour in the closure of many companies in his own country.
It is not funny that he thanks another country for giving his citizens jobs when we used to export products not only to South Africa but to Europe.
Mugabe should be ashamed of the number of people being laid off in our country everyday; he should have been in meditation for the last twenty years as to why companies are closing down by the month.
But worst of all, it is tragic that fellow African presidents do not find it necessary to isolate this political demon and make him answerable for his actions.
The world has become more and more complicit in the ongoing tragedy in Zimbabwe.
There is no humour in this man’s behavior.
Zimbabwe is not a scene from a stage act; Zimbabwe is a nation that is crying for help and we are mistaking wails of pain for demands for an encore.
It might help if we all treated Mugabe as a murderous manipulative dictator that he is and stop applauding him as he snatches young people from among us, never to see them again.
The African Union gave him the chairmanship of their organization and some Zimbabweans were asked to contribute money for his foray to Ethiopia, presumably on AU business.
SADC gave him the chairmanship of its organization so, SADC must cough up the money to stage its Summit where they will, once again, give Mugabe a standing ovation.
Now, that is comedy that even Trevor Noah cannot write.
Yes, you may laugh, please.
