Jacob Zuma offended the gods
By Tsanga Tutankhamen Shanga
It is said you really get to know how a person truly feels about you when anger makes that person lose guard and blinding hatred loosens that person’s tongue.
In the immediate aftermath of the summit of the SADC Troika in which Robert Mugabe was reminded that keeping a promise is honourable and honesty shows respect for others, all hell broke loose.
It was Robert Mugabe himself who raised Cain from the dead and his ZANU-PF subordinates immediately followed suit. The primary target of that fury was President Jacob Zuma.
Of course ZANU-PF is very contemptuous of the South African president. The kind of verbal abuse unleashed against Jacob Zuma since the momentous meeting in Livingstone (Zambia) can hardly have been said in the spur of the moment. Anger made ZANU-PF lose the plot and its guard to betray the disdain with which Jacob Zuma is held within that party.
If Zuma did not know it prior to the full-throttle verbal abuse by ZANU-PF, he must not have any doubt now. ZANU-PF harbours a deeply seated animus against him and the ANC. As a matter of fact, ZANU-PF and the ANC have never been the most comfortable of partners even during the struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively.
Now all pretense of kinship has been dropped.
Zimbabweans know that there never was no meaningful bonds. Whatever there was mere ephemeral but we are sorry nobody bothered to warn Zuma ahead of time. It is also unfortunate that he was stricken by the snake Thabo Mbeki rescued from drowning. A rescued snake knows no gratitude. Its first act once it is safe is to strike its rescuer.
That kinship was always a humpty dumpty precariously seated on a wall. Straight from Zambia, Mugabe gave his wrecking crew the signal to push that humpty dumpty. He had to know that within that crowd is a certain professor that will do anything to please Robert Mugabe as atonement for previously organizing the failed political putsch.
The professor in question is a one-man wrecking crew.
As the smartest and most articulate character in ZANU-PF after Mugabe himself, the de facto ZANU-PF spokesman pushed and smashed the fragile humpty-dumpty-like brotherhood between ZANU-PF and the ANC. That humpty dumpty is shattered.
Robert Mugabe and his official spokesman are frenetically trying to piece it together but there is no putting the humpty dumpty back together. The truth is out. It always has a sinister way of coming out – rine manyanga hari putirwe, as the Shona proverb states. The game of ZANU-PF deceit is over.
The ancients said that that which comes first out of a man’s mouth is the truth, and that which comes out later is only meant to deceive. ZANU-PF is busy telling Zuma that they did not mean to insult him.
If they are sincere it, how come they have yet to say they are sorry for the indignities and insolence they have publicly heaped on Jacob Zuma? Even if they say they are sorry, they are rarely sincere. Watch what they do but listen not to what they say.
The South African people, the ANC and Jacob Zuma should not expect a public apology despite the public humiliation suffered at the hands of ZANU-PF. The reason they will not get an apology from ZANU-PF is very simple.
You see, Mr Zuma committed a cardinal sin against the gods. In their own eyes, the people who run ZANU-PF think of themselves immortal gods. Human beings apologize to gods but not the other way round.
Gods are above acts like observing basic tenets and strictures of Ubuntu. Laws are made to be obeyed by mere mortals. These gods are above these temporal laws, which they flaunt with impunity.
Going against them, like Jacob Zuma and Rupiah Banda did in Livingstone, is not considered a crime. No, it is worse than that. It is a sin, a sacrilege for which Zuma must pay the heavy penalty of a public flogging like a petty criminal at the hands of a vigilante mob.
ZANU-PF is not a political organization as far as the people who run it are concerned. It is a pantheon, a veritable house of gods. Gods do not take marching orders from mere mortals. To ZANU-PF gods, Jacob Zuma and Rupiah Banda, that other upstart from north of the Zambezi River, are mere mortals. Yet there they were issuing directives to gods.
How dare they?
Now Jacob Zuma and South Africans know the insolence the Zimbabwean people have had to endure for the past 31 years. Everything that did not go their way because of their intransigence is now portrayed as Jacob Zuma’s fault. That is how ZANU-PF gods operate. They act like they truly believe they are a consuming fire.
We Zimbabweans know these strange gods. As far as they are concerned, they are never at fault. They can go to Matebeleland and Midlands to slaughter 20000, as what happened to the Amalekites, and simply brush off the pogrom as a divine act carried out in a moment of holy fury. We know these gods.
They can run a robust economy into the ground but they are always blameless. Someone else has to be responsible for that. Incompetence? Not a problem! They can say the vilest words. Insolence? Not a problem! They can snatch food from the jaws of hungry children. Lack of decency? Not a problem! Gods do not suffer from these human frailties.
These gods think they are immortal. They openly declare that the god of gods will rule forever like a Biblical Melchizedek that has neither a beginning nor an end. Amazing, is it not? These are the gods that Zuma and Rupiah Banda offended. Pity these two mere mortals!
According to ZANU-PF, Zuma’s expected duty is to pay obeisance to these gods as well as quietly do their bidding like defending them when they come under attack from gods that are far superior compared to them. That is what Thabo Mbeki did. Zuma’s predecessor did a wonderful job of propitiating and pleasing the ZANU-PF gods.
Like the humiliated DRC president, Joseph Kabila, discovered when he had to wait for a day to meet Robert Mugabe, Zuma was expected to bend over backwards so that the god of gods, Robert Mugabe, could make a political wife out of Zuma. It happened to Thabo Mbeki and, numerous local and regional leaders.
Mr Zuma may recall an incident in 2008 just after the election when the gods unleashed their consuming fury on the Zimbabwean people. Asked what he was going to do to stop the grisly murders by the agents of the gods, Mr Mbeki said there was no problem in Zimbabwe to warrant concern on his part. He did not even bat an eye as he said it.
The rest of the world was aghast at the apparent insensitivity. Zimbabweans were not. We knew what had happened to the son of Govan Mbeki. The generality of the Zimbabwean people came to view poor Thabo as a hopelessly effeminate political eunuch in Robert Mugabe’s political harem.
Thabo Mbeki’s words in defense of the indefensible roguery of Mugabe’s agents rang hollow just as the words spoken by an abused wife in defense of her abusive husband despite an obvious swollen face after a beating.
If Zimbabweans are cheerful today, that joy comes from a simple fact. It seems that at long last, in Rupiah Banda and Jacob Zuma, Robert Mugabe has run into proud African men who will not permit ZANU-PF to politically vasectomization them so that they can be politically sodomized by Mugabe while his minions cheer him on.
They are still trying to neuter Zuma right now. They are sure he will buckle under pressure so they can do with him as they please.
After Jacob Zuma instructed ZANU-PF to cease and desist, Robert Mugabe’s thugs ignored Zuma and the SADC Troika. Poor parishioners, children and the elderly among them, were mercilessly gassed in a church one week after Zuma ordered ZANU-PF to stop committing such dastardly acts.
A party activist was abducted during the inhumane gassing of the House of God. After stupidly asking after the god of gods was well, Douglas Mwonzora may be dragged to court in chains for offending the god of gods.
The police commissioner, a sycophant of Robert Mugabe, initially threatened to arrest Zuma’s emissaries in retaliation for Zuma’s refusal to get politically vasectomized. When they arrived in Harare to monitor the discussion by the signatories of the agreement brokered by the South African government, Zuma’s emissaries were barred from the discussions.
They were forced to retreated back to South Africa with their tails tucked between their legs.
That was clearly meant to humiliate Zuma. ZANU-PF is directly challenging him straight in his face. Zuma will never be forgiven by ZANU-PF so he might as well quit trying to pacify them.
For refusing to sacrifice his dignity on the altar of the god of the gods of ZANU-PF, Jacob Zuma has been called a man not in control of anything in South Africa. He need not lose sleep over that accusation from ZANU-PF, a party that has presided over the complete destruction of Zimbabwe.
If Zuma were not restrained by the African tradition that counsels level-headedness while under verbal assault, he would publicly remind ZANU-PF that the proof of Mugabe’s failure to run anything productive is provided by the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans living in South Africa out of fear of persecution and hunger.
Of course Mugabe and his ZANU-PF team of sycophants and bottom feeders are not gods. They are actually the sorriest excuse for humanity for they have no sense of shame. Zuma does not have to be bullied into a political eunuch by these ZANU-PF clowns.
Audaciously ZANU-PF made a subtle dig at Zuma’s lack of a university degree. The Sunday Mail, which is controlled by ZANU-PF, is accusing him of being illiterate. Zuma did not read the report put together before the troika meeting, charges the ZANU-PF propaganda rag happily inherited from the Rhodesian Front.
May be someone needs to remind ZANU-PF that Robert Mugabe has a whole raft of degrees but he has very little good to show for this degrees. Simply because a person has a degree does not mean he is educated. Mugabe is ample proof of that. As a result of being daft, little good has come out of his raft of degrees.
Someone in South Africa needs to remind Robert Mugabe’s boys that the only degree that Mugabe has put to use is the degree in violence he claims to have. For that reason, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have flocked to South Africa.
On the contrary, Jacob Zuma may not have degrees like Robert Mugabe but he is educated when it comes to issues that matter the most to the people he leads. Zuma uses common sense.
Jacob Zuma is a liability to Africa, charges ZANU-PF. That charge is a joke that could make a hiding thief laugh. Perhaps Zuma’s aides need to remind Mugabe’s boys that Mugabe has actually done more damage to the image of Africa. The justification for the Slave Trade and colonialism was always predicated on the basic premise that Africans were not really mentally mature to be responsible for their own wellbeing.
Educating an African was as good as training a dog to carry out amusing tricks but, at the end, it would always be a dog. That was the argument used to degrade Africans into beast of burden, drawers of water and hewers of wood. Now Africa’s detractors can point at what Mugabe and his numerous degrees have done to Zimbabwe as proof.
Lastly, Mr Zuma, if you ever visit Zimbabwe, you must make sure you bring your own bottled water. Also make sure you have sentinels watching that water all the time lest it be tempered with. African tradition says you cannot turn down food when your host offers but you must remember that these ZANU-PF creatures are not Africans at all.
Besides, African tradition does not encourage you to knowingly walk into a deathtrap and expect benevolent ancestral spirits to rescue you from malevolent gods.
