By Maynard Manyowa
Speak to many an ordinary men and they will echo the old age sentiment that ‘politics is a dirty game’ and in a dirty game everything goes. Well, almost everything. What Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko did and said during a rally in Chiweshe on February 12 was clearly dirty but utterly, disgracefully unbecoming.
Society has very high standards on the kind of behaviour it expects from a normal ‘human being’ let alone a father, but the bar is usually lowered if the person is a politician.
By nature politics is a battle of sorts, and the populace will occasionally accept slurs and jibes as long as they do not cross the line of gamesmanship and witticism into dangerous and disgusting incitement.
So, to the bemusement of many, officials will often sink low in their assaults. Often times, pushing the boundaries of free speech in politics does not bring the outright condemnation it really should. It appears politicians are not required to have an immaculate public relations record.
For quite some time now, the country’s first lady, Grace Mugabe has been charging around like a bull in a china shop. She has dished out more than her share of slurs and some of the lady’s utterances have been particularly inappropriate and rogue.
The shared rationale this year, as things have veered from bad to worse, had been that, it’s a dirty game of politics, brutal infighting inspired by ‘successionists’. That changed drastically after the Chiweshe rally, when Mphoko shared his thoughts. There was another scenario, one worse than anyone had imagined: that a sitting Vice President would attempt to re-ignite ethnic hostilities and burn bridges built in the 1987 Unity Accord. That rally was a game changer.
Events have the capacity to make a fool of anyone. After the insults, ignominy and injury followed. The war veterans threats to “go to war”, the unrest and uproar that followed ought to only prove the start of the Zanu PF’s serious problems, and not just because the party is now severely weakened and missing a key ally and pillar of its regime.
This is about the past and the future. The last time leaders casually sought to ride on ethnic and tribal differences to win support, a million people died in Rwanda. Zimbabwe’s own history is fragile, and sensitive on the back of the mass murder of more than 20, 000 minority Ndebele’s in ethnic cleansing. A regrettable stain in the country’s history that even the President is ashamed of, and has described as ‘a moment of madness’ during his 36 year reign.
Mugabe rarely cares about tribal tensions, and has in the past described a minority of the Kalanga ethnics as hoodlums and rapists terrorizing citizens along the borders and beyond. It goes beyond that, a reputation established in his more ruthless days has sustained him for long and rightly so. It is why his behaviour after the Mphoko comments is so intriguing.
In such situations, some take respite in gallows humour. Others resort to realism. Sensing that Mphoko had crossed the dangerous line, Mugabe was forced into action. Just over two decades after Gukurahundi, and with the offender Mphoko beside him, he addressed the nation on television. President Mugabe acknowledged the danger of reckless comments informed by misguided tribalism.
He reminded us that “It doesn’t matter which tribe we belong to” and that “we belong to one another regardless of which region we come from, which province come from, which tribe we belong to”.
Yet Mugabe’s decision to elevate Mphoko from the ranks was another early measure that may be a misjudgment. Not that there were many other candidates. Mphoko’s appointment as vice president of the country was based on two factors: a shortage of plausible alternatives and the fact Mugabe really, really wanted someone who was loyal to his wife. Neither provides proof he is suited to it.
The insistence to stay in a presidential suite to the cost of millions while the nation survives on less than a dollar a day and the propensity to stir ethnic unrest suggest not. This was an accident waiting to happen. Having handed him an absurdly generous position as Vice President and then the freedom to speak even though his mind is not qualified to, Mphoko presents Mugabe a problem. It is one of his own making.
Has Mphoko damaged relationships beyond repair? It’s a legitimate concern. His remarks about the MaKaranga were improper and dangerous. It’s one thing to play factional games and divide your own party. It’s another to divide a volatile society along sensitive, fractured, and fragile tribal differences.
That is not politics or factionalism, it is hate speech and incitement. The Vice President should count himself fortunate he did not wake up in a jail cell the next day and expelled from government.
Historically Zanu PF is a closed shop of a party that often protects its own and has a tendency to brush serious misdemeanors under the carpet. This cannot be another if the party wants to retain any credibility. A verbal warning and a call to unity is unsatisfactory. Mphoko should be kicked out, and of course Grace must ‘Shut Up’.
Maynard Manyowa is a political analyst and social commentator. Article appears on www.maynardmanyowa.com
