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ONE of the rich pickings former Vice President Joice Mujuru is getting from being booted out of Government and the ruling Zanu-PF party, and more recently the Zimbabwe People First party is the “legitimacy” from the West as one of the women in politics and decision-making in Zimbabwe. We say so because the likes of Joice Banda of Malawi who became president following the untimely death of Dr Bingu waMutharika, and Liberia’s incumbent President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf have higher ratings than Mujuru, despite the latter having a political career that spans over four decades.

Banda, Johnson-Sirleaf, Dlamini-Zuma among others are well-recognised among Africa’s who-is-who in politics and decision-making.

The same cannot be said about Mujuru. She can plot her citation trajectory on the global stage before her expulsion from Zanu-PF, and she will realise that there is not much to write home about, which should make her introspect, because impact analysis is important.

Now that she is doing the West’s bidding — denouncing Zanu-PF and President Mugabe, things have changed. She has been globe-trotting, when only a few years ago she was on the West’s sanctions list. Thus we say that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

On International Women’s Day, Mujuru was among panellists at the UK’s London School of Economics’ celebrations of IWD, which was running under the theme: “Women Leaders on the Global Stage: Lessons for Africa,” a topic that dovetails with the 2017 theme: “Be Bold for Change”.

Mujuru’s presentation, however, went against the letter and spirit of celebrating women during this month of March.

She used the platform not only to solicit for sympathy for allegedly being unfairly treated by Zanu-PF, but also raised an assortment of trivial issues that did not relate to the topic.

She probably forgot that an academic setting is interested in ideas generation, unlike the national executive meetings she has been holding in ZimPF and now the National People’s Party.

It might have been a useful scapegoat, but sadly for her, the presentation confirmed what has been said by her former colleagues in ZimPF — she is clueless and requiring massive “hand holding”, exactly what the Americans said about Morgan Tsvangirai.

It is also unfortunate that Mujuru who has preferred to be surrounded by men also made a preposterous claim that she was meant to be President Mugabe’s successor, were it not for her detractors, women in particular who blocked her ascendancy to the presidency.

Now we understand the undertones in the song she sang on the final day of the Zanu-PF Women’s League Congress in 2014. Standing at the high table with President Mugabe, she sang: “Pakati penyu apa, pane achandipandukira” (There are some women in your midst, who will betray me).

This was an unwarranted attack on her colleagues, leading us now to ask: if she was President Mugabe’s automatic successor, why did women withdraw their support?

Is this why she sought solace and comfort from Messrs Didymus Mutasa and Rugare Gumbo, because women had rejected her, although Gumbo and his colleagues have made it clear that they knew her limitations as a leader?

If the topic was on women leadership and the lessons Africa can derive, why should a person who says she has potential to lead Zimbabwe in 2018 want to form coalitions?

What is she saying about her leadership by turning to MDC-T’s Morgan Tsvangirai and other male-led opposition groupings? Is it a leadership style that prefers male decision-making, since she has continued to alienate herself from women? We expected Mujuru to inform her handlers, the number of women in top leadership positions in ZimPF and the NPP, since the so-called elders in ZimPF did not have women members.

Mujuru cannot strive to remove specks of sawdust in other women’s eyes, but ignore the plank in her own eye. Disrespecting one’s country in foreign lands is something we expect from young and overzealous activists, not someone who was part of the Zimbabwe Government for 35 years.