The month of November is known as Mbudzi in the vernacular Shona language. Indeed, November is the month of the goat and ever since he ousted former President Robert Mugabe in a coup in November 2017, Mnangagwa has always been a “goat” President.
From 2017, by his own acts of commission, ED has always been part of the goat discourse in the country. Since his Presidency was violently birthed in the month of the goat, there is little wonderment why the goat spirit has continued to haunt him.
The entry into office in the month of the goat, the plot to grab Hopewell Chin’ono’s goats from his village project in Murewa, the Mbudzi roundabout project and the Presidential goat scheme all show ED’s uniquely ludicrous fixation with goats .
Indeed, ane mweya wembudzi —he is haunted by the goat spirit.
Dear reader, I first wrote about Mnangagwa’s goat spirit in this column on 6 May 2022 when his government attempted to raid journalist Hopewell Chin’ono’s village project in Murehwa to steal his goats. This was after the investigative journalist had made a poignant presentation at a UN summit in Geneva, Switzerland.
Today, as the whiff of smelling goats continues to hover around ED’s Presidency due to the millions looted in a Presidential goat scheme, I stand vindicated that this man is haunted by a goat spirit!
It could only be a Presidential goat scheme and not a Presidential lion park project, in keeping with ED’s Shumba Murambwi totem. It was not an eland (mhofu) sanctuary, as Moses Mpofu’s name would suggest. It was also not a cow or a heifer breeding scheme as you would expect in a project linked to someone called Chimombe.
Hell No. Mnangagwa’s goat spirit could only exhort him towards nothing else but a goat project. And for me, it all stems from November 2017, the month of the goat in which his Presidency was violently birthed in a putsch.
ED’s goat legacy
1. The pounce on Chin’ono’s goats
In May 2022, a well-known Zanu PF thug Taurai Kandishaya threatened to violently grab Chin’ono’s goats at a project he runs at his rural home in Murehwa. Kandishaya had previously flaunted pictures of himself standing besides Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa and we could only legitimately speculate on where he taking his instructions from.
Kandishaya wildly claimed that Chin’ono had abused a Zanu PF goat project that was meant to benefit villagers and for that reason, party youths would violently reclaim the goats.
But Chin’ono explained his project and even published receipts to show that he had personally imported 35 Boer goats from South Africa.
After his presentation in Geneva on the precarious human rights situation in the country, there was no prize for guessing why Chin’ono was being targeted by the regime
But for a whole ruling party’s youth league, led by Kandishaya, now the Youth League political commissar, to preoccupy itself with stealing a citizen’s goats in his village can only point to a regime haunted by a goat spirit.
Kindly note, dear reader, that the same Kandishaya is one of the leading guys in the Youth League who are fronting ED’s unconstitutional bid to stay in power until 2030.
Yes, he is a key member of the chorus that is saying the goat must continue to graze on top of the mountain.
2. The Mbudzi Roundabout project
Just to reinforce the goat spirit around him, ED did not choose to invest in the collapsing health sector, where just $40 million would have done wonders to resuscitate key suspended units at the national referral infirmaries of Mpilo, Harare Hospital and Parirenyatwa.
Neither did he choose to massively invest in education with the millions that have now been looted.
After vainly pursuing Chin’ono’s goats in Murehwa, ED in the year 2022 busied himself with investing in the Mbduzi roundabout project, just to reinforce the goat spirit that haunts his leadership mind.
Of all the dangerous junctions and roundabouts in the country, it had to be the one called Mbudzi.
And just like all the other multi-million dollar projects undertaken by this brazenly corrupt dispensation, millions of dollars were yet again looted in the Mbudzi roundabout project.
Through Kuda Tagwireyi’s Fossil Contracting, fronted by one Obey Chimuka, the project ended up being touted as an $88 million project when the primary contractors from South Africa said at most, the project would cost $42 million.
This means the project was overpriced for corruption purposes and some $46 million was looted by the criminals now teeming around the President.
So the goatly-named Mbudzi project was yet another haven for looting and corruption.
3. Presidential goats
And now there is the $87 million Presidential goat scheme, in keeping with Mnangagwa’s goat spirit that continually hovers around his incompetent Presidency.
As stated earlier, the characters involved in this corrupt Presidential scheme, from ED himself as the driver of this publicly funded project, will show you that the goat spirit could only sway them towards a goat project, even though it merited the nation to invest in something else, particularly health and education.
Dear reader, kindly note that these were not going to be ordinary goats. No. They were going to be Presidential goats! …kkk
And yet again, millions of dollars were looted by the criminals around the President, which criminals have now fallen out with royalty because they purveyed onto the public domain sensitive information incriminating their criminal boss.
Africa’s goat witticism—the idioms and proverbs
Dear reader, to assist in unpacking the goat spirit haunting the country’s royalty, I will take you through, for the second time in two years, my known African goat witticisms.
There is an Ethiopian proverb which says no matter how many times you wash a goat; it will still smell like a goat.
Indeed, no matter how many times they change their leaders; and no matter how much PR is deployed to cleanse them, Zanu PF will always remain a criminal entity, particularly at its apex.
Another African proverb says it is not the goat’s place to check if the lion has eaten. But in this instance we, the citizens of this land, certainly have a right to know what the lion (Shumba) who presides over our land has eaten in this public forest. If we do not do the checking, we run the very serious risk of being eaten ourselves.
As they say in yet another clever polemic, if you are not on the table as one of the diners, then you are definitely on the same table as the menu!
Mbudzi kudya mufenje hufana nyina is a Shona proverb that literally means a goat inherits its grazing and browsing traits from its ancestry.
Figuratively, the proverb means that one borrows their behaviour from their ilk; that in all manner of what we do, we follow the traits of our predecessors. Never mind his wild claim to be fronting a “new” dispensation, Mnangagwa, in all stealing manner and habit, is just but a scarfed Robert Mugabe, if not worse.
Indeed, Mbudzi kudya mufenje hufana nyina . Mnangagwa is just but a Robert Mugabe, only a bit worse. The penchant to grab and loot has always been deeply ingrained in both Mugabe the master and Mnangagwa the protege.
In keeping with the Shona people’s goat witticism, Chin’ono did well in 2022 by laying out the true facts with supporting documents. In Shona, they say mbudzi kuzvarira pavanhu hunzi nditandirwe imbwa .
Indeed, a goat that gives birth in public wants the same public to help ward off dogs and other predators. And in 2022, the citizens obligingly came out guns blazing on social media while others drove to Hopewell’s village in Murehwa to help ward off the Zanu PF predators.
So the goats were saved after Hopewell went public exhorting the nation to help him ward off the human predators. .
It was renowned African author Chinua Achebe who said a man does not chase rats when his house is burning. In our case, a man does not chase goats when his house is burning.
For a whole ruling party and a sitting President to preoccupy themselves with Presidential goats while our public health and public education sectors are collapsing is mere child play— kutungana kwembudzi .
The Shona idiom kutungana kwembudzi or the fighting of the goats figuratively refers to trivial matters.
Given the collapsing government services in all sectors and the low morale among civil servants, the government’s preoccupation with a Presidential goat scheme, where millions have been looted, is akin to prioritising trivia.
In the Shona culture, all men who did not make meaningful contributions at the village court or the dare were sent to skin the goat— kuvhiya mbudzi . As an assignment, skinning the goat as part of the preparation of a meat relish for the attendees to the dare was a task for the naive; the not-so-serious characters.
Skinning the goat was an assignment for those who added no value to the meeting so that they would leave serious characters to deliberate on the grave matters affecting the village and the community.
Perhaps ED’s legendary fixation with goats is a form of abdication; his own excuse to leave all the grave national issues to others of better leadership aptitude while he concentrates on a goat project of one type or another. Ari kuvhiya mbudzi .
And as I said last Friday, a whole Zimbabwe Anti Corruption chairperson, one Michael Reza, most likely at ED’s instigation, has now chosen diversionary tactics and is now running away from the ZEC scandal that has gripped this nation.
Indeed, in keeping with the goat spirit haunting his regime, the Reza blade was deployed to only probe the corruption and avarice relating to the so-called Presidential goats, the Dear Leader’s animal of perennial fancy that doggedly haunts his mind.
4. Conclusion: Mnangagwa, the ultimate GOAT
For ED, almost everything he does is somehow related to goats, in keeping with the goat spirit that haunts him.
Now he has contracted his criminal acolyte, ex-convict Wicknell Chivayo to partner Star-link in their massive national digital rollout programme.
There is no doubt that the project is in keeping with the Fourth industrial revolution. But in a country where the majority of families live on less than US$1 a day, it will be a challenge to the impoverished millions in this country who use that small handset, known as kambudzi .
The people who still use kambudzi are the poor people who pay taxes and whose funds have been stolen in all these massive heists by the criminal lot around the President.
These poor people also cannot even afford expensive burial sites and if they are in Harare, they are likely to be buried at the Mbudzi cemetery near Hopley.
Yes, kambudzi the phone and kuMbudzi the burial place, in keeping with the fancy of our goat-smitten President.
Chivayo’s IMC will give the lootocrats yet another chance to loot. ED had to impose his will and not allow Starlink to choose its own local partner.
Our ED is keen to be the ultimate GOAT, the Greatest Of All Time, when it comes to matters of avarice and graft.
For the record, dear reader, remember the UN Report on the Plundering of the Democratic Republic of the Congo natural resources, a report done by the United Nations Panel of Experts (S/2002/1146) names Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa as having been one of the key architects in the looting of the diamonds in the DRC.
So our ED is an international criminal, noted and cited as such in an official United Nations document.
Perhaps all these goat projects are meant to reinforce the message that he is the ultimate GOAT when it comes to corruption in Zimbabwe.
But let us not allow Mnangagwa’s goats to lead us astray into the mountains so as to divert from the key matter at hand.
It’s the ZEC scandal stupid!
Wishing you all a goaty week.
Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is a journalist and a political scientist by profession. . You can interact with Tamborinyoka on his Facebook page or on the twitter handle @luke_tambo
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