By Luke Tamborinyoka
The long diatribe by the politically promiscuous and chameleonic Jonathan Moyo last week attacking the book by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai represents unparalleled naivety which does not bode well for one so wont to pretend he has one of the best functioning brains in the country.
The public media have now joined the fray, misrepresenting the contents of the book to the extent of saying Tsvangirai wanted to take up arms to force himself into power after failing to out-rightly win the 2008 Presidential election.
The irony is that Zimbabweans know who forced himself onto the people using the army to thwart Zimbabweans for a second bite of the cherry after Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe were humiliated in March 2008.
For all the brouhaha in the public media, it appears they have missed some of the juicy stuff in the book that Zimbabweans would be interested to know about.
In the legendary silence when the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission failed to announce Presidential election results, the Prime Minister says in his book that Former State Security minister, Nicholas Goche called Hon Elton Mangoma to tell him that he (Goche) needed to talk about transitional mechanisms now that the MDC had won the election.
“According to Goche, Mugabe had agreed to step down and to ensure transfer of power, there was need for us to take some of their Zanu PF winners into the coalition administration,” (pp484).
Now this is the juicy stuff those attacking the book should be putting into the public domain rather than complaining about petty typographical errors. The Prime Minister is not writing about dead people, but senior officials and ministers who can be able to tell us if this is true or not.
Because the big news here is that if the Minister of State Security conceded to defeat as alleged, there is no doubt therefore that Zanu PF and its candidate were defeated outright and the run-off was contrived.
Firstly, Jonathan’s critique published last Sunday about the PM’s autobiography, “At the Deep End”, is not based on substance but on petty issues. To criticise a book simply because of typos on the names of Sikwili Moyo and Milton Gwetu is to completely miss the point.
The fact that Moyo’s article is not about substance exposes the real Jonathan we have known over the years; vintage Jonathan; a petty character who will go down in history as the most celebrated political turncoat of our time.
Because for Jonathan, it is only him who has a functioning brain and everyone else is a moron.
And that is the running thread in his critique of the PM’s book, notwithstanding the fact that he has always made uncharitable comments anyway about this famous politician who won a credible election on 29 March 2008.
Proper discourse in his article is lost by his strange affinity to malign and vilify at every turn; to dig deep into the dark crevices for his usual hate language so that he can attack a man for simply telling his own story, in his own words and in his own style.
And I want to admit from the outset that it also invites one to dig deep into the same crevices for a few uncharitable home-truths about this notorious purveyor of hate speech in this country.
Jonathan forgets that he may be a hero in Zanu PF where the famine of brain and capacity is legendary and where he is a sacred crow.
Anywhere else, we know Jonathan simply as an empty vessel that makes the loudest noise; an opportunist of loose morales; indeed a political prostitute whose political home is never predictable at any given time.
Today he is Zanu PF, tomorrow he is not.
The question on every Zimbabwean’s lips is: “Can the real Jonathan stand up?”
Secondly, Jonathan posits that “the real Tsvangirai does not come out in his: At the Deep End. — “Maybe because he cannot swim.”
It is pertinent to note that Jonathan is not familiar with the deep end because he has always swum in shallow political waters.
Turncoats swim in shallow waters to make it easy for them when they want to go out quickly to swim in another pool whose name could be United People’s Movement, Zanu PF, Third Way, Third Force, Generation 40 or any pool independent of any political river!
So those who reside in shallow waters because of their treacherous aptitude cannot qualify to talk or write about the deep end where the likes of Prime Minister Tsvangirai have survived savage attacks by relentless political sharks that shall remain nameless!
Thirdly, it is dishonest on the part of Jonathan to pretend to be getting worried by the fact that the book is being serialised by South African newspapers, which he says is a “fitting confirmation of his (the PM’s) foreign-driven politics.”
This is the same Jonathan who is nowadays grovelling before the Dear Leader, singing sonorously for his supper as he desperately attempts to atone for his “treachery”.
This is the same man who was exposed by whistleblower website WikiLeaks as having been a “useful messenger” to the “Americans” who now seems so agitated about what he alleges to be “foreign driven politics.”
What was he doing with “foreigners”, plotting to seduce the President into retiring using foreign bounty? I know for certain that this book will soon be serialised by local newspapers.
But it remains hollow and shallow for Jonathan to describe a man who won a local election; a man whose support spreads from Kazungula to Tamandayi as a man of “foreign-driven politics.”
Fourthly, Moyo’s piece is curiously titled “Expose on Tsvangirai’s political obituary.”
The only expose on anyone’s political obituary have been the WikiLeaks revelations that are rumoured to have signalled an end to the political careers of many in Zanu PF such as Jonathan himself, who have now taken to the pen to save their careers ahead of Zanu PF’s mini Congress in December.
Fifthly, the good professor, who in one of his numerous political lives in February 2008 claimed publicly that Tsvangirai had defeated Mugabe, states in his Sunday Mail article that the Prime Minister lost the Presidential election of 2008.
What stinking hypocrisy!
We are all aware that these are trying times for turncoats in Zanu PF who spent many hours at the US embassy while publicly lambasting the Americans and the British “imperialists.”
We appreciate their predicament as they go through these tough times where fellow party cadres are failing to reconcile their private behaviour with their anti-American and anti-British public utterances.
But Jonathan makes a fool of himself, soiling himself all over as he bootlicks the Dear Leader who only two years ago he urged to leave office “in the national interest.”
The man is simply a clown and the irony is lost on him that only three years ago, he was very vocal in articulating the public secret that Mugabe had lost the Presidential election to Morgan Tsvangirai. Now he has the guts to write in his diatribe that the Prime Minister lost the same election!
Please, can the real Jonathan stand up?
And he appears to take offence in that the Prime Minister says in his book he responded to an advertisement in “The Rhodesia Herald.”
For God’s sake, that was the name of the newspaper then unless this political prostitute wants us to back-date the current name of the newspaper in the spirit of “patriotism.”
Finally, it is pertinent to note that this is Tsvangirai’s personal story.
Instead of complaining about other people’s accounts of their lives, the likes of Jonathan Moyo should go ahead and tell their own story, including an explanation of how they attained the glorious status of “useful messenger.”
And his last paragraph of a whopping 110 words betrays the eagerness to bootlick.
He refers to “Generation 40” as the Gushungo network when only a few months ago, he said the same name referred to the Young Turks; the young generation that must now take over the reins in Zanu PF because the elders in this party had refused to hand over the baton.
But forget the bootlicking ink that is all over his article in The Sunday Mail, and we are likely to see more of these as we trudge towards the Zanu PF Congress in December. The fact remains that this man of many political colours accepts the relevance of Morgan Tsvangirai in the country’s body politic.
Otherwise why waste vital newspaper space over the years writing about a complete political write-off? After everything has been said and done, at least Jonathan and his public media puppets read the book. And every man who tells his story is gratified when it has listeners and readers!
Luke Tamborinyoka is the Director of Communications and Spokesperson to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. He writes here in his personal capacity. He can be contacted at [email protected]
