Zimpapers Logo

William Ruto

Reason Wafawarova on Thursday
Zimbabweans bear a huge socio-economic burden, and like most people of the developing world, our plight is not only a burden for our politicians, especially aspiring ones, but also for those that front the politics of humanitarianism on the global stage.
Our opposition politicians valorously claim that they carry on their shoulders the burden of “Zimbabwe’s struggle for democracy,” and many times they bemoan the ruthlessness of “tyranny” in our midst.

It does not matter that Morgan Tsvangirai’s loyalists are notorious practitioners of bludgeon politics – clobbering out of the party any characters perceived to be a threat to the precarious position of the dear leader, or that Nelson Chamisa’s idea of organising the party is the blatant purging of perceived dissidents, wainscoting the entire party structures with stooges that pay blind loyalty to only one man.

We are still supposed to respectfully count our opposition politicians “pro-democracy”, even at a time they are spending most of their time in courts defending alleged hoodlums so committed to the art of political violence that they have perfected it into a cultural norm.

Our own Government, like every other government in the world, will keep telling us that it is painstakingly burdened by the need to empower us all, and that its leadership is made up of selfless cadres whose sole motivation is to put everyone else ahead of themselves.

This is notwithstanding glaring exposes of egregious acts of corruption in entities directly administered by our executive, and we obviously have to put up with the imperceptible pace of justice coming the way of the exposed characters, or the laggard complications that come with investigating the malfeasance. We can even risk our political correctness if we get too obsessed with the idea of the law catching up with the miscreants.

As an amateur writer, I used to count politicians among the most morally driven people, especially on matters to do with patriotism and humanitarianism.

With increasing maturity I now know that it is foolhardy to count on the conscience of politicians. They hardly have any.

Most of our elected politicians believe in wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, politics without principles; just like our modern day clergy seems to fashion worship without sacrifice.

Across the political divide, we have leaders that carry a false burden right in front of our faces, and many times it takes us very long to come to terms with the unconscionable deceit.

In Kenya, William Ruto would hysterically cry at rallies he co-addressed with Uhuru Kenyatta in election 2013, and to many the man came across as burdened heavily by his people’s plight. One hopes this is still the position in post-election time.

In Chapter 4 of the book “Zimbabwe: Picking Up the Pieces” edited by Hany Besada, an impish writer by the name David Moore claims to be immensely burdened by Zimbabwe’s plight for “Press freedom under Mugabe’s rule”, and he writes about the media’s role in ending “ZANU-PF’s deep-rooted despotism”.

I believe this burden bearer on our behalf is some white South African academic who may as well genuinely believe that his concerns for Zimbabweans are well placed and well intentioned.

In his writing Moore chose to label me a “journalistic ideologue” whose “anti-capitalist rigour and vigour” is to defend ZANU-PF’s “primitive accumulation with a racial twist”. Moore opined that I write “copious opaque essays attempting to marry rationality and rabid ZANU-PF defence”, and this is not the first such accusation to come my way.

In this case my real crime was cited as a few extracted quotes from an essay I penned on December 31 2009 titled “Unity: The Best Enemy Repellent”, where I passionately urged Zimbabweans to engage in a genuine process of national healing, in line with the spirit of the inclusive Government that had just come into effect then.

There is more extensive quoting of my work by Moore, including that the “suffering, and even death” of those that fell victim to the ruthlessness of political violence “must not inspire us to more conflict”.

Commenting on the “lineage connecting writings such as Wafawarova’s with the publication of speeches of Robert Mugabe”, Moore wondered: “Could the President of Zimbabwe have created a distinct style, influencing Zimbabwe’s intelligentsia forever?”

Now this is the real burden on the shoulders of Moore and his colleagues in the Western community – Mugabeism.

The false burden on the part of Moore and his Western think-alikes about how we Zimbabweans supposedly use our media irresponsibly is just a façade for the anguish that comes with the unthinkable reality that Robert Mugabe could have created a unique way of independent thinking among Zimbabweans in particular, and perhaps Africans in general. The last thing the West would ever want is the sprouting of little Mugabes “forever”.

Now that we have established how elites use false burden bearing and false responsibility in pursuit of their own selfish ends, it is important that we ask why this trend is favourable with ruling and domineering elites.

Let us look at some of the signs of false burden bearing and false responsibility. Any time a politician needs others and their problems in order to feel good about his own character we have to know that false burden bearing has begun.

At one time we even had our opposition politicians going around politicising otherwise natural deaths in order to smite their ruling political opponents with a bad image. On the other hand, our ruling elites find it handy to use the sanctions-inflicted suffering of our people as an effective tool to denounce their rivals in opposition politics, even in cases where it is really hard to see the role of sanctions.

The habit of using the needs of others in order to meet one’s own selfish needs has been the bane of African politics for decades now, and this false burden bearing is what we must confront as the electorate.

Another sign of false burden bearing is the tendency to do what others should be doing, or playing the messiah – posturing as the rescue crack team over matters that otherwise need collective action of all others.

There are some people in ZANU-PF who, when they talk about the revolution, you would be forgiven for thinking that the project is solely entrapped only in their brains – with every other person a mesmerised spectator.

We will not talk of Tsvangirai who counts himself the “main actor” in the movie- style “struggle for democracy” only him is said to be the face, according to Douglas Mwonzora and Nelson Chamisa.

On August 12, 2013 David Moore wrote: “First, Morgan Tsvangirai’s leadership will be questioned. He has fobbed five elections since 2000. Noble history aside, he is severely hobbled. Perhaps excessive reliance on the likes of the International Republican Institute (chaired by US Senator John McCain) has contributed to the fall of the one-time trade union-based party.

“This ties in with the second issue: the party must rebuild its mass base. As this process unfolds, the Cold War between secretary-general Tendai Biti and much younger national organiser Nelson Chamisa – no real challenge to Biti – must be resolved without tearing the party apart. The party has failed to organise well enough to counter the cunning ZANU-PF centaur: 50 years of war and operating in the milleux of local and international manoeuvring has created a party very hard to beat; the MDC must learn to beat it, and faction fights will not help.”

What Moore feared after the July 31 landslide defeat of the MDC is exactly what has happened. The party has torn itself apart, Chamisa is still savagely ambitious, Biti is still aggressively arrogant, and Morgan Tsvangirai is irretrievably stuck in unabated delusions of grandeur.

But the man shamelessly still does his false bearing of the Zimbabwean burden, regardless of the ironies of his reckless opulent life style, or whatever is left of it in the wake of his alleged penury, to borrow Ghandi Mudzingwa’s lexicon.

Boundary trespassing is one characteristic of those that do false burden bearing.

This is well exemplified by the meddlesome politicians from the West – those who poke their noses into the affairs of anyone of their choice in the name of providing leadership to the world, be it in Libya, Zimbabwe, Ukraine or Syria.

The West has no problem becoming the Holy Spirit of all others – a means of control and dependency, always striving to tell other people what to do with their countries and their lives.

They tried to be the Holy Spirit of Libya, and today Libya has degenerated into the definition of a failed state – thanks to the marvellous liberating ways of the mighty NATO.

False burden bearing politicians often clamour to take responsibility over everything and anything, including matters well beyond their mandate – all because to them the burden of others is merely a platform on which one can stand for cheap political recognition, or for infantile attention seeking.

We have seen Tsvangirai rushing to do political rallies each time he has been rejected either by his own colleagues in the MDC leadership or by the electorate. False burden bearing can come out of rejection – when, because of rejection, one feels they need people to look up to them so they can feel affirmed or needed.

Each time Tsvangirai leaves a rally attended by a few thousands people he probably reaffirms his imagined popularity, and that gives him some sleep, hopefully.

ZANU-PF made trail blazing promises leading to the landslide electoral victory of July 2013, and until the party can make good each of its promises one cannot divorce the party’s actions from false burden bearing designed to attain political expediency.

In fact the party has over the years earned a legacy of notoriety where it showcases its wizardry in crafting highly popular policies that are often neglected before any meaningful implementation.

We now need to know who will genuinely carry the burden of the resettled farmer, the burden of the unemployed youth, the burden of the poverty stricken village child, the burden of underpaid worker, the burden of the diseased, and the burden of the orphaned child.

The vote of the people should never be deemed to be an act of gullibility. It is an act of faith that needs to be respected and repaid.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!

• REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.