By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka
Barely a week after China externally mediated on his health issues; Constantine Nyikadzino Dominic Guvheya Chiwenga was in the news boisterously announcing that there is no need for external mediation in Zimbabwe’s dialogue process as the country has the capacity to sculpt home-grown solutions to its problems.
Chiwenga was lashing out at the MDC for demanding an external mediator if Zimbabwe is to have a sincere, honest and credible dialogue process that should scaffold the country for growth and stability.
The MDC has been unstinting in its demand for a mutually agreed convener if the country is to have meaningful dialogue among the political players, not this charade; the monologue misnamed as a dialogue under the Emmerson Mnangagwa chaired Political Actors Dialogue platform.
And indeed they are actors, in the true sense of the word, judging by the thespian antics to legitimize that dry process replete with political nonentities.
Unbeknown to Chiwenga, he was contradicting himself by talking about local solutions for local problems. Chiwenga is a patient still smarting from an external medical mediation process involving the Chinese government, which government sneaked him back into the country unbeknown to his Zanu PF colleagues including ED himself.
Chiwenga first went to South Africa and India for medical treatment before his trip to China as he sought external intervention for his health complications.
And then he ironically comes back to lash out at the MDC’s call for external mediation, alleging that the country can solve its problems on its own.
Indeed, Jenerari, we must first seek local medical solutions to our ailments before we seek external mediation to our own health complications.
Any fruitful debate on external mediation must begin there.
I put it to you that your tiff with your wife actually needs external mediation, in line with the dictates of our own culture. Your matrimonial fall-out is a ripe zone for aunts and the sahwiras (family friends), themselves a form of external mediation.
Even in our culture, daring aunts would exhort external intervention from a brother if one was not potent enough, matrimonially.
Or does your new-found aversion to exogenous intercession have anything to do with the vibe that an audacious external mediator planted wild oats into your beloved Mary’s plush bosom?
Maybe that is a story for another day!
You can’t come back from some medical sanctuary outside the country and start attacking our patriotic doctors, themselves a form of local medical solutions to local problems while in the same vein claiming to be a staunch advocate for home-grown solutions.
You don’t come back from China and start attacking external intervention, without even any hint of irony that your own treatment in China with Beijing’s help was a form of external mediation.
It all speaks to the reasoning levels of the good General. Or maybe the event of November 2017 was equally a coup of his own aptitude and reasoning capacity, assuming the aptitude was there in the first place.
The country could be on the verge of yet another drought with reports that the World Food Programme is looking for US$293 million to feed half the country’s population that is facing imminent starvation.
While the hunger and the prospects of yet another dry season is worrying, the arid and parched cerebral content level in the entirety of government, particularly in the Presidium is even more perturbing.
In the week that Lionel Messi clinched his sixth Ballon d’Or, the scarfed lot that foisted itself in the country’s cockpit should get similar recognition for the plumbing depths of their incompetence and inconsistency.
In the meantime, the nation braces to dish out ED’s Christmas present!
And there must be no external mediation when we give it to him!
Soon and very soon.
Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka is the Deputy National Spokesperson of the MDC. He is a multiple, award-winning journalist and an ardent political scientist who received the Book Prize when he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science at the University of Zimbabwe. You can interact with him on facebook or on the twitter handle @luke_tambo.
