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Evan Mawarire

SELF-EXILED pastor Evan Mawarire and his #ThisFlag movement have always overstated their influence on the people of this country.We have always argued that this so-called pastor, who has now reduced himself to a social media nuisance churning out messages from the comfort of his United States base, the ultimate destination of his grand mission when he launched his so-called movement, is not an issue in the politics of this country.Of course, given he is granted interviews on international news channels, where his superb acting talents usually dupe those who are interviewing him, and their gullible audience, with Mawarire faking tears whenever he talks about this country, there are some people who believe he is a big factor in this country’s politics.

They credit him with organising that so-called Shutdown protest which, as we have always argued, merely fed off the strike by teachers and other civil servants, a position that has since been supported by the apparent failure by subsequent calls for a similar Shutdown of this country with Zimbabweans ignoring such calls.

But Mawarire, given that he needs to keep impressing his masters, working for the dollar that he is now enjoying in the luxury of exile in the United States, has to try to devise other ways of ensuring that he justifies the money that is coming into his bank accounts and which is now taking care of his family.

And last week, on the eve of the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League showdown between Highlanders and Dynamos at Barbourfields Stadium in Bulawayo, Mawarire and his useless movement believed they could make themselves relevant once again by taking advantage of a huge event and the publicity that it generates.

Mawarire posted a video, online, as he always does, calling on the Highlanders and Dynamos fans who would be at Barbourfields to stand up, in protest against the Government, in the 36th minute, wave their national flag and sing the old Ishe komborera Africa anthem. He said the 36 minutes represented every year he claims Zimbabweans have suffered under the Zanu-PF Government and he believed that in the City of Kings, where the opposition used to register some success stories in polls before Zanu-PF roared back to capture the majority of the constituencies, he had fertile grounds of making a big impression.

Mawarire also gambled on the publicity that he could get from a game that would be broadcast live on SuperSport and, on the eve of the match, we saw some of the opposition newspapers giving the event the oxygen of publicity they believed would move the Dynamos and Highlanders fans to heed the call and protest at Barbourfields Stadium.

We didn’t write about it because we knew that the Mawarire madness has been one big joke and his calls were going to be ignored by the supporters who would be more worried about the plight of the two giants, in a match in which Bosso had the chance of completing back-to-back victories over their big rivals for the first time in 10 years, than heed the calls of a wayward amateurish politician-disguised as a pastor.

Mawarire had been fooled by a number of white spectators, at Queens Sports Club, whose number didn’t even get into double figures, heeding his call for a protest during the Test match between Zimbabwe and New Zealand.

We expected those whites would behave that way, after all Jenni Williams had led an aggressive campaign to try and make it happen, but that, too, when one considers the number of people at Queens Sports Club that day, was a monumental failure.

Interestingly, we didn’t see Williams being involved in the Barbourfields campaign, after all, this is largely a place where black people go and watch their support, and — unlike Queens Sports Club — maybe it doesn’t represent the kind of places, or the kind of people, that they want for their funny politics.

But what matters is that the 36th minute came and went at Barbourfields on Sunday and, as we had always believed, the bumper crowd at the stadium remained glued to their seats, watching the two football giants battling each other in an absorbing contest, while Mawarire and his paymasters watched in horror from the comfort of their off-shore posts.

What baffles us is that the opposition newspapers, which had campaigned vigorously for that protest to happen, somehow all went quiet, as if they didn’t owe their readers an explanation that it had failed horribly, but then what do you expect from these agenda-setting publications when reality hits them hard?

Even zifa president Philip Chiyangwa’s message, in which he mocked Mawarire for the failed protest, was ignored by these newspapers, but it’s something that the people of this country have also come to expect.

Mawarire should know that he can fool people some of the time, but he can never fool all people all time and as shown at Barbourfields Stadium on Sunday, his fraudulent movement has run its course.