“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet?’
These were the words from renowned English playwright William Shakespeare that he wrote in a famous line in the play Romeo and Juliet to convey the message that the names we give are irrelevant and that a name does not change either the form or the substance of that which is named.
Yet we have all come to know that names and labels carry deep personal, cultural, familial and historical meanings and attachments. Names give a sense of who we are. Names denote and connote permanent labels by which persons, places and other phenomena are identified.
Names, particularly the names of the country’s leaders and national icons are usually famous names that ordinary people often like to be associated with.
The names of political leaders are often replicated in communities across the countries as those given them walk with a spring in their step for sharing names with the respective country’s royalty.
Yet it remains embarrassing to be associated with unpopular tyrants and leaders that have no traction among the ordinary citizens. While names of popular leaders are a blessing, the names of tyrants and autocrats are a curse and nobody wants them!
While most people, regardless of their gender, would be happy to be associated with their country’s leader, a Harare woman last week dragged her daughter-in-law to court for “insulting and disrespecting” her by referring to her as “ED”
” She (my daughter-in-law) says I am ruthless , hence she calls me ED .,” the fuming mother-in-law, Betty Chinyangare, told a stunned court in Harare last week.
Dear reader, kindly take note that what is being said here shows that in the court of public opinion, Mnangagwa’s shortened name or nickname has hit plumbing depths.
Ordinary people called by that name now feel disrespected and insulted because the name is associated with “ruthlessness”, as Chinyangare herself told the court when she dragged her daughter-in-law, Mercy Mutonono to court for calling her by the much-touted moniker, ED.
For me, this was a huge story, especially considering that this name that ordinary Zimbabweans now regard as a curse and for which they are filing court petitions belongs to a man who claims to have won an election.
Now the same ordinary citizens who are purported to have voted for ED in their “overwhelming” numbers on 23 August are angrily petitioning the country’s courts, openly telling the magistrates that they feel “insulted and disrespected” by being linked to a name associated with “ruthlessness.’
It may have been one person, but her sheer guts and audacity to go to court and publicly speak ill of a “President” may be reflective of a suppressed national feeling of disdain.
And the name now being fumed about belongs to the country’s leading citizen whom the country presumably voted for. It all begins to further confirm that this was Indeed a rigged election.
Dear reader, considering the country’s political moment in the aftermath of a stolen election which Mnangagwa claims to have won resoundingly, this was a story the journalists did not accord its deserved treatment.
This week, this column lightens the discourse to talk about the nicknames and tags that the world’s famous leaders and politicians have been known by.
Mnangagwa is now simply referred to as ED, but as we have seen from the case filed in Harare last week, it is a tag or a nickname that has failed to garner traction in the court of public opinion. This is notwithstanding the heavy marketing of the ED sobriquet by party apparatchiks and the public media.
World leaders and their nicknames and tags
A nickname is any other name that one is known by, apart from their legal and official name. It can be a shortened version of a name or a surname or a compressed version of both.
It could also be a trait, a form of behaviour or any attribute that those who give it fancy to attribute to the person. A nickname could even be related to something one has done in the past.
It could be anything.
But the bottom line is that a nickname is a name one is referred by that is not one’s official name.
Like Mnangagwa, some have been simply known by their initials and these include Morgan Tsvangirai (MT), Nelson Chamisa (NC), Jacob Zuma (JZ) and many others.
But most of these were hugely popular brands than ED, who dismally lacks the effortless charm of your usual political leader and whose name ordinary citizens are stridently dissociating themselves to the extent of petitioning the courts when they are referred to by his name.
Of course, Zuma was also referred to as Umshini Wami, (my machine gun) a snide and cheeky reference to his many wives and his purported runaway libido .
In the early years of his political career, Morgan Tsvangirai was also known as “Boycott”, a nickname that had gained currency during his trade union days when he became famous for spearheading national shutdowns by successfully calling for work boycotts in his other life as the secretary general of the country’s labour union.
Tsvangirai was also nicknamed Ndamba. And Chamisa is not just NC. He is also known by the monikers Cobra, baba vaTichatonga , Gwenhure (a singing bird that is known as the Persian Nightingale) or Olympus.
In my memoirs, I will probably update you, dear reader, on who coined these names, what had happened as well as the proper context in which these nicknames were created.
As a young politician on a continent of geriatric leaders, Chamisa ran the last election under the tagline of Mukomana/ Ujaha (the boy), a marketing stunt that tapped into his peers among the country’s bulging youth population that now constitutes the biggest voting number demographically.
Similarly, Kenyan politician Uhuru Kenyatta is widely known as Kamwana (kid). Since the time he first ran for office in 2002 as a young politician in his 40s, the name has stuck. Kamwana (the kid) became refreshingly popular on a continent where the leaders in office are often old men in their 80s and 90s.
Joshua Nkomo was known as “Father Zimbabwe”, a nationally embracing tag that spoke to a huge brand that went beyond region and tribe to encompass the entire country. The nickname ‘Father Zimbabwe’ spoke to the national span of Umdhala Wethu’s politics. Umdhala Wethu was yet another of Nkomo’s affectionate names by which he was known.
Raila Odinga is Baba (father) given by his adoring supporters as a sign of respect while Jerry Rawlings of Ghana was referred to as ‘Junior Jesus”.
The wildly charismatic former President earned his nickname in the heady days when he came into office through a coup in 1983. Hailed as a Messiah, from whence he derived his nickname, Rawlings rose to popularity in a 26:year tenure in which he began first as a military ruler and later as elected President of the country.
Cyril Ramaphosa has chosen to ride on the brand of Cristiano Ronaldo, the iconic footballer with whom he shares the same initials. When he ran for the ANC Presidency in 2017, Ramaphosa’s team ran with the CR 17 campaign, an exploitation of the CR 7 global brand that is synonymous with the Portuguese forward who wore the number 7 football jersey, which became popular worldwide.
Nelson Mandela, a global icon unto himself, was known as Madiba, the name of the Thembu clan to which the Mandelas belong.
Mugabe was Bob, a name given to him when he taught in Ghana, where he married his first wife, Sally.
Muhammadu Buhari, the former President of Nigeria was derisively referred to as Johnny Walker for his frequent trips outside the country, where he often spent weeks.
Of course, it had nothing to do with the Johnny Walker that we know and he didn’t necessarily “walk” to all those destinations where he blew the country’s scarce foreign currency, just as what our own ED does. Mugabe earned the moniker Vasco da Gama for similar expensive flying jaunts outside the country.
“Walker’ in Buhari’s case was just used figuratively to denote travel.
Long-serving Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is nicknamed Ssabalwanyi (fighter among fighters), Mzee (old man), Tata (father) or Mulalo (herdsman).
President João Laurenco of Angola is affectionately known as J-Lo, a fancy nickname that rides on the popular brand of the famous American singer and actress Jennifer Lopez.
Long-serving Malawi President Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who ruled Malawi with an iron fist for 30 years from 1964 to 1994, was called Ngwazi, which means the “all-knowing”, the wise one, the liberator, the brave one, the hero.
Our very own Douglas Mwonzora is derisively known as ‘ Makatimezha kupi or ” Ra , Ra , Ra , stewing in his own prediction as both nicknames are derived from his own prediction that he would resoundingly win the 2023 election, which he lost dismally though he claimed to have withdrawn from the plebiscite
The notion of nicknames has also been a keen area of scholarship and research.
Taska (2012) conceptualises nicknames as pragmatic social constructs that reflect not only the nicknamer’s view of the nicknamed person but also the personal identity and values by which the nicknamed persons themselves can be judged.
Taska adds that the portent meanings of nicknames derive from what he calls “the watchfulness of their designers”. In other words nicknames depict the sum total of what others perceive you to be
And not only African politicians have nicknames. They are a worldwide phenomenon. Politicians from all continents have their own sobriquets.
In the United States of America, their Presidents not only have nicknames but they have code names given to them by the country’s Secret Service. The US Secret Service not only gives code names to Presidents but also to members of their families.
President John Frederick Kennedy was widely known by his initials, simply as J.F Kennedy but his secret service code name was Lancer. First Lady Jackie Kennedy was code-named Lacy by the country’s Secret Service.
Richard Nixon is widely known for his Watergate scandal. His nickname was Tricky Dick but his Secret Service code name was Searchlight.
Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford’s nickname was Mr Nice Guy for his clean cut and non-partisan demeanour.His Secret Service code name was Passkey. Some commentators say his code name was ironic in that’ true to its dictum, Ford went on to lock the door for any possibility of prosecution against his predecessor for the Water gate scandal.
He gave an absolute pardon.
President Jimmy Carter’s nickname was Jimmy, a shortened and colloquial version of his official name James. He became the first President to officially use his nickname and colloquial sobriquet instead of his official name.
His Secret Service code name was Deacon, which was appropriate because it reflected his deep religious faith. President Carter was active in the Baptist church and continued teaching Sunday school even after becoming President.
The nickname for Ronald Reagan was Dutch after his father said he looked like a Dutch man shortly after his birth. His Secret Service code name was Rawhide.
President Bill Clinton was known as Bill. And Bill was his nickname as his first name was William, as was (and still is) the case to most people who carried the name William. Bill Clinton’s Secret Service code name was Eagle.
Barack Obama’s nickname was No Drama for his audacious, cautious and meticulous Presidential campaign in 2008. His Secret Service code name was Renegade.
For Donald Trump, the nickname was “The Donald” first used by his wife, Ivana. The Secret Service code name was Mogul. He had wanted the code name “Humble” but the Secret Service had other ideas.
For current President Joe Biden, his (nick)name is a shortened version of his actual name, Joseph. The Republicans perjoratively call him Sloppy Joe for his alleged mental slowness. His code name as given by the country’s Secret Service is Celtic, which they first gave him when he was still Vice President to Obama.
Some scholars posit that nicknames and name-calling are some of the most understudied yet pervasive subtle forms of expression. Nicknames and tags have helped illuminate various ways in which they not only serve political agendas but serve as alternative archives of feelings, processes, acts and mindsets.
The local man is ED, who has left sn entire nation Extremely Distressed (ED) by the massive looting instigated by him and his acolytes.
The entire nation is Extremely Despondent (ED).
Extremely Depressed (ED).
Indeed, in some cases when it comes to nicknames of political leaders, they legitimate and de-legitimate, they praise and trash the politician themselves and their opponents respectively
Before the era of codenames, other US Presidents just had nicknames. Woodrow Wilson, he of the famous 14 points, was called the Phrase Master. He was an acclaimed historian who had a penchant for unwritten speeches because of his famed oratorical eloquence.
Calvin Coolidge was simply known as Cool Cal which was culled from his campaign slogan “Keep it Cool with Coolidge.”
Dear reader, here is to wishing you a cool weekend without any recalls.
In our case, we are stuck with a political leader whose ED sobriquet has so incensed Zimbabweans that they are petitioning the country’s courts when someone arrogates that tag on them!
They now find the name Extremely Depressing (ED)!
Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is a journalist and a political scientist by profession. Tamborinyoka is also a change champion in the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). You can interact with him on his Facebook page or on his X handle @ luke_tambo
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