Tino Chinyoka – MDC circus: Letters of Administration

By Tinomudaishe Chinyoka

Forget the fake $15 bhidza from Donald Trump of the fake hair, there is a new circus in town. It is called Letters of Appointment.

When a person dies, and leaves a notable estate, the Master of the High Court appoints an Executor for the estate. This person is in charge of dividing the property (or loot, depending on how it was gotten, but that is another story).

The appointment comes in the form of Letters of Administration. You can be a charmer par excellence but without them Letters, Old Mutual and others like them will not speaketh anything to thee about thy deceased relative’s pension or insurance. Thou shalt not be heard without thine Letters.

He who holds the Letters of Administration holds the keys to the kingdom

But the crucial bit is that Letters of Administration are issued after the deceased ehh……., what’s that pesky word, …..dies, yes, that’s the one. The reason is simple, like the great poet Simon Chimbetu said in ‘Pfuma Yenhaka’, while the man “…arimo muchingerengere navana mukoti, angapona sei vamwe vatoverenga mombe?”

But in the MDC, the party of the fake titles, (of that shortly), there is no waiting for such an inconvenience. With Morgan Tsvangirai very much alive and fighting his brave fight surrounded by family, Letters of Administration are crisscrossing each other on the WWW and on the streets of Harare.

Engineer Mudzuri is Acting President, says one Letter, and he adds on Twitter that he just met with MT to reaffirm that his Letters are genuine.  Not so, says Advocate Chamisa, l am Acting President, and to prove my bona fides, I have pressed the reset button (whatever that means) on our preparations for elections (you get the impression that he wanted to change the ‘l’ in elections to an ‘r’, but maybe I am being uncharitable to the lad).

He cannot produce a photo with the Dear Leader, unfortunately, but I for one do not buy the stories that he has been refused permission by the family to see Morgan. The boy is a pastor after all, noone refuses a man of God audience with a sick relative.

And where is Thokozani Khupe in all this? Nowhere, it seems. She is the one that was elected by Congress, but her Letters of Administration appear to have been superseded by newer ones. Maybe she needs to press this rest button too?

I will not buy the argument that she is being sidelined because she is a woman, because that is just silly. After all, the MDC has a stellar record or elevating women to top positions, just look at…..ahh….uyu mhani uya nhingirikiri uyu…..no?, never mind, let’s move on. It is just not true.

And do not even begin to tell me that it is because she is Ndebele, I refuse to buy into that silly claim that a Ndebele person is only good enough to be a deputy, never the leader. It is just not true, wasn’t Gibson Sibanda Tsvangirai’s deputy at ZCTU……what, he wasn’t?….never mind then. Move on.

Thokozani Khupe can’t have Letters of Administration because of one thing: she is not educated enough. How can a mere Ms. lead the party when there is Engineer M and Advocate C to run it after Dr MT. The party must keep its standards, after all.

What? You lie! How can it be true that there is no qualification called Advocate? Say it isn’t so! An advocate is a lawyer who decides to not work in a law firm, but has no special extra qualification? There is in fact no certificate hanging on a wall somewhere from some university or institution saying ‘this certifies that So and So has passed the examinations and become and Advocate?’ You lie!

What of Engineer then, surely there is? No? Never mind.

But still, Ms Khupe cannot get her own Letters of Administration….., wait, didn’t she recently graduate with an earned PhD? So her doctorate was not from some nondescript South Korean institution? So it’s in fact Dr Khupe, Mr Tsvangirai, Mr Mudzuri and Master Chamisa? Interesting.

Satirical, yes, except it shouldn’t be. The MDC might be doomed to lose the next elections, but it remains the largest opposition party in our country. Every democracy needs different voices, to keep the government honest. That is why the MDC is necessary as an institution.

But, what this circus about appointments is doing is reduce the hopes of millions into a joke. Aside from these useless titles, what do we know about their policies? We know what the MDC stood for in 1999 but what does the MDC of February 2018 stand for, really?

What would a President Engineer Mudzuri do to get Zimbabwe moving forward? We know that President Advocate Pastor Chamisa will get $15 billion from Trump (what, it wasn’t so? never mind then) but what is his opinion on healthcare, education, indigenisation or the revival of NRZ?

The circus at the MDC affects us all. When they lose the coming election, which they will, they will claim it was because of rigging, and our efforts to court the international community and end our isolation will be affected. That is why they must stop.

Though that might be a forlorn hope. What is the MDC now, if not a cabal of fake titles and egos jostling for even more titles? You know it’s not a Movement when one person and not the collective appoints it’s leaders. You know it’s not Democratic when the elected VP is sidelined for someone the Supreme Leader likes. And you know it’s not about Change when all this smells like Mugabe all over again.

Pity. But, why worry Goromonzi after Form 4. #EDhasMyVote.