Somebody stop this woman before she damns us all

By Tinomudaishe Chinyoka

Describing one of her sister-wives, a character in Ignatious Zvarevashe’s masterpiece ‘Kurauone’ says ‘ane gunyengu rakaita kuti nyimo dzifukwe‘. Like most things Shona, when something is said as well as this, it really does not translate.

However, recent events in our nation have helped bring the meaning of this phrase to life. And when it hit home, many of us finally saw what the Prophet Amos meant when he said: “The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

I speak of course about recent events in our history, when the nation watched as the whirlwind that is Grace Mugabe (neè Marufu) swept across the country destroying the political careers of those in Zanu PF that do not subscribe to the doctrine of a Gushungu monarchy.

Heroes of the liberation war were brought down as her minions suddenly discovered new meaning for Article 29 of the Zanu PF constitution: the vote of no confidence. Mai Mujuru fell. Jacob Mudenda survived by the skin of his teeth. Rugare Gumbo went. VaMutasa is gone. Provincial chairmen fell, most of them brought in under very questionable elections endorsed by her husband only a few years before (the blatant rigging in the Midlands provincial elections being a case in point), but suddenly past their sell-by date.

The crime that they were all accused of was that they had undermined the First Lady during her tour around the country. Calling that insult-athon a tour is in itself problematic but who are we to complain?

Now, it is a fundamental truth that a person, no matter how undesirable, can be condemned for a crime that either does not exist or is impossible to commit. I cannot for example be convicted of the murder of a Martian extraterrestrial because such beings do not exist, just as your neighbour cannot be convicted of blaspheming President Mugabe because he simply is not God (though others want to suggest otherwise) and blasphemy is not part of our law.

Our party, the one founded by a people ‘with a long, proud history and-cultural heritage; who have always cherished our sovereignty by resisting aggression and foreign domination; and who on the 18th April, 1980, regained our nationhood and joined the family of nations of the world as a sovereign state’ (l paraphrase from the preamble), has a constitution that, despite recent events, is fairly comprehensive.

But search as hard as you can, you will not find a clause in there about a ‘First Lady’. The national constitution is equally silent on the matter. That animal, it seems, does not exist in any formal sense of the term. In other words, according to both our party constitution and the supreme law of the nation, Grace Marufu is just a mere former secretary that dated her married boss and promptly married him once his wife was conveniently out of the picture. As she does not have a job now, she is, to use the vernacular, a glorified housewife.

So insulting her is no different from insulting chembere iri pamufuku ichitsvaka mvura. Snubbing her and not attending her rallies is just the same as not going kumusika waMai Sorobhi, your neighbour. Both decisions not wise, since both women are likely to have a few choice words to share, but not crimes.

To be even clearer, tirege kurova imbwa takaviga mupinyu, kutuka Grace Mugabe (neè Marufu) is not a crime. We are a country already struggling under difficult socio-economic troubles, many of our own making, and we do not need to add dzimwe nhamo dzisina basa. I think men, sorry the man that shares Grace Mugabe’s bed thinks that she is (or certainly was) a very beautiful woman with very soft hands, but others might also legitimately think that Grace Mugabe imbwa. That is probably not true, she is certainly not a dog nor has it been proved that she has any doglike tendencies (stories of rumpled beds in South Africa and trysts with printers and dealers notwithstanding), but we cannot be a country that criminalises zvinemero or make ignoring a person a crime.

How insulting then to Brigadier Callisto Gwanetsa for example that you fight for your country, serve in the armed forces, at great risk to life and limb, then as you settle into retirement from service and entering active political life, your career is torpedoed by the fact that you failed to fawn at the feet of some person with an inflated ego?

How damaging to the cause of women emancipation that just as a woman seemed poised to succeed an African leader in an orderly fashion, she should be brought down by hired mobs calling her a ‘witch’ and a senile old man saying ‘someone wants my power, and the amazing thing is that it is not even a man, but a woman’, as if the very idea of a woman in power is so unthinkable it cannot be countenanced. Calling women witches just brings us way back to 1890. Is this why they repealed the Witchcraft Suppression Act, so that they can insult women without censure? Why is vaMutasa not the witch of Makoni if Mai Mujuru is the witch of Dotito?

Not that President Mugabe has suddenly become anti-women. You can tell whose hymn he is now singing from. This is not a man who would say in 2004 that Mai Mujuru will not end just as ‘VP’ but go further, then suddenly find it strange that a woman wants power. I posit that this is more consistent with the warped thinking of someone who, one month after graduating with a PhD, stands in front of thousands of people and say “isu vamwe hatina kudzidza“.

As loyal party members, we keep quiet when one mistake is made. We worry when two are made. But when it becomes eleventeen different things, that becomes a pattern, and any right thinking party cadre must stop and think: how is this helping our party? Is this woman not losing us votes?

How is it okay that someone with no job, who claims that her husband only lives on his salary, sees nothing wrong with boasting that she got a $20m loan from the bank for her business? What collateral did she put up? How is it okay that she can boast about a $7m donation from the Chinese for her orphanage? Why did the Chinese give her the money, and what were they promised or given? Why does she think that it is okay to go around embarrassing her daughter about issues that really shouldn’t be public knowledge but between Bona and her oh-not-a-pilot husband? Why does she think that it is okay to go arounding peddling lies about Kaukonde stealing O Level certificates as if she thinks that that is what helped him build his business empire? Why does she think that it is okay to insult Ndebele men, given her own husband’s legendary hatred for Ndebele women (one stole his father from his mum) and the unscientific nature of her conclusions? What is First Ladyish about denigrating an entire people when one’s family fortunes depend on their votes?

You begin to see a pattern. And it is not a good one. Which is why the shame that is Manzou is so poignant: we are dealing with “ndyire yemunhu, umathanda zinto“. It is time to rebuke mweya wehuwori wapinda pana mai, kuraira dhimoni romukara nezita raJesu! And after Manzou, when she dispossessed poor people of their property to make space for wild animals there is no better way than to quote the good book:

“The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’

“This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’”

Chiri mumusakasaka chinozvinzwira.

Tinomudaishe Chinyoka

Member – Zanu PF: until they fire me.