Get off the table, Grace, the money is for the beer!

By Tanonoka Joseph Whande

There is always a lot of movement both in and outside Zimbabwe about Zimbabwe yet things basically remain the same.

The situation is getting worse for Zimbabweans as we watch politicians discarding any pretense at working in the interests of the nation.

Just where do we begin in this tragi-comedy that is our Zimbabwe? Like Hosiah Chipanga said: “Supu yakora kupfuura sadza”!

Our politicians and those “in positions of power” are repulsive irritants; selfish animals who never flinch at the pain they cause the people and children.

I cannot understand their mentalities; they have no allegiance to the nation or to a political party.

It is now a free-for-all and morons lead the pack.

Having already broken records in mediocrity, Zimbabwean politicians keep sinking deeper into thicker political sludge. It’s their home, like pigs in a sty.

These politicians have cast away any dignity we, along with their own families, might have bestowed on them.

As the economy continues to rot away, they spend time discussing whose surname a child ought to take.

Our priorities are askew at the highest of levels; no one cares to address real issues and how to rescue the nation.

Zanu-PF, MDC formations and other political parties have insurmountable problems within their own existences and this political instability has affected the running of government.

Mugabe’s failures and the perceived docility of Zimbabweans when it comes to politics have fired up parasitic members of his family who are now behaving as if they own Zimbabwe.

How a whole nation, including the military and police, can be cowed by an aging dictator and his insatiable wife for so long is beyond comprehension.

Zimbabwean politicians have become more than an embarrassment; they are a clear danger to Zimbabwe.

Our bootlicking politicians are more educated than parliamentarians in other African countries. But look at them!

Their ideology is ‘money before people’. They have become the filthiest political prostitutes on the continent. Always singing absurd praises at those in authority hoping to be thrown a left-over bone.

Grace Mugabe is an end product of this void that afflicts our cowardly politicians who do not believe in themselves but rely on shortcuts and handouts.

Over the years, the political situation in Zimbabwe has been fertile manure for Grace Mugabe. I am quite surprised that it took her so long to make her move.

Meanwhile, educated people turn into squeamish morons who no longer believe in their own worth, having become heavily dependent on Mugabe and his family.

“Your Excellency, the university admires your tremendous skills of intellectual intelligence, spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence, including empathy, compassion, love and grace,” said the University of Zimbabwe in a “congratulatory message” to Grace Mugabe on her 50th birthday last week.

Grace Mugabe is ‘Your Excellency’?

A starving goat would never associate Grace with any intelligence if its life depended on it.

If Grace had so much as a shadow of any intellectual, spiritual or emotional intelligence, she would never have married Mugabe in the first place.

The University of Zimbabwe abdicated its throne as the nation’s intellectual dome of knowledge; it insulted thousands of its students, academics and alumni by awarding an academic doctorate to an undeserving and seriously academically deficient person.

UZ believes that Grace has empathy, compassion, love and grace? And we send our children there?

“I am doing as much as I can, as an individual, to also build the nation, to contribute to the development of Zimbabwe in my own small way,” Grace said last week.

Grace Mugabe developing Zimbabwe?

She took over a farm, turning hundreds of children into homelessness, saying that she needed the land to expand her orphanage. The irony of it all!

Sensing the docility of Zimbabweans; Grace noticed the spinelessness of the men and women who surround Mugabe. She took full advantage of her husband’s senility and is practically running the country with the help of some people who think that they might use her for now then elbow her out of the way at a later stage.

It is going to be interesting seeing as we do how the coalition she led in her ouster of Joice Mujuru has quickly crumbled. That faction of Zanu-Pf now boasts of three factions within itself.

Grace now has her eyes on the big trophy herself – something that should be causing sleepless nights for many people, including Jonathan Moyo and Emerson Mnangagwa, who are now, obviously, on “the other side”.

Sadly, the tragedy is not confined to the ruling Zanu-PF alone.

Politicians in the opposition ranks continuously hold their own jamborees of foolishness as they keep launching new political parties.

The situation has become laughable. At this rate, we are soon going to have more political parties than people.

Worse still, none of these parties have any ideology different from the other. They break up not over policy differences but over personal issues and jealousies.

The moribund Morgan Tsvangirai, with all his failures and stagnant outlook, still remains the most recognizable opposition politician with considerable followers.

There is no question that he is tired and lacks forward-looking advisors with new ideas as he continues to be bumped from one corner to the other.

But his dilly-dallying continues.

He campaigned for and caused the recall of opposition MPs who had ditched his party at a time he was eagerly courting other opposition parties for a united front.

After the MPs were removed from Parliament, Tsvangirai went on a nationwide tour telling people that his party would not participate in any elections until electoral reforms had been adopted and put in place.

He called it the “no reforms, no elections strategy”.

Zanu-Pf went ahead with the elections and claimed all the parliamentary seats on offer.

Today, Tsvangirai’s few remaining MPs hardly have any effect in Parliament.

Last week, Tsvangirai ditched the “strategy” and wants his party to participate in any future elections despite the fact that no electoral reforms were made.

He, surprisingly, dispatched his Secretary General to Europe on a four-day tour of European capitals “where they are expected to brief western governments and party supporters on the country’s state of affairs ahead of the 2018 elections”.

Apparently, party followers in Zimbabwe are not that important and will later have their turn to be informed about the reversal of strategy.

The MDC-T must satisfy the European governments first.

This kind of behavior only helps to insult an already fatigued electorate. The people have lost faith in politics and in politicians.

Political parties abuse the people’s trust and people are aware.

The menacing arrival of Grace Mugabe on the political stage has burdened an already unpopular Zanu-PF and is causing consternation in and outside Zanu-PF.

With no constituency of her own and with absolutely nothing to offer, Grace is heavily dependent on her husband’s political machinery and uses threats to intimidate people into line.

We see so-called “Service Chiefs”, the likes of the army’s Constantine Chiwenga, Augustine Chihuri of the Police, Perence Shiri of the Air Force, Paradzai Zimondi of Prisons and “CIO boss”, Happison Bonyongwe, who are nothing but bed-wetting boys in Grace’s political orphanage.

Like a lioness with cubs, Grace is keeping a wary eye on her business interests and is ensuring that she keeps her empire well after her husband leaves the presidency.

Untrusting of whoever will succeed Mugabe, Grace strongly believes that she alone can be her only trusted caretaker.

And there are many bootlickers standing in a long queue to assist her.

“Your desire to bring freedom and economic empowerment for the marginalised black majority is as inspiring,” read last week’s birthday message from Supa Mandiwanzira. “An advocate of transparency and good corporate governance, Dr Amai’s philanthropies of unparalled virtue (sic)…”

He is talking about Grace Mugabe, for goodness sake, and she barely finished high school, if at all!

But Grace is enjoying the phony praises and accolades she knows are not true – just like her husband did.

But she is dancing on the table now and has made sure there is only room for one on that table top. Zimbabwe cannot afford a dynasty, especially a Mugabe dynasty.