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each sound, and are taking note.
Now wonder why MDC-T national executive member Lucia Matibenga a fortnight ago told her colleagues that the in-fighting in the party of would cost them votes.
The “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN” inscription in the book of Daniel is on the wall. For a party formed by various coalitions and backed by Western funding and support, they realise that there is now no meaningful labour movement to talk about. And, lest they forget, they are the ones who killed that goose that laid the golden egg.
With more unemployed people and closed companies as never before their formation, the workers as a basis for the MDC-T’s existence is now a non-issue.
They did not imagine that the sanctions they begged for would have such devastating effects on them, despite the denials. In Shona we call it, “Huku yazvidyira mazai ayo”. (Eating your own or self-destructing.)
Mention of the sanctions issue will give Muckracker another chance to think that Tendai Hildegarde Manzvanzvike (note the spellings) is a dumb squib.
So too student activism. The students leaving high schools and colleges need security – not just well paying jobs but real J-O-B-S.
“KuState House kure; kure kachana!” and crying wolf every time there is an election will not get MDC-T to State House.
This is why this week I round off these election agenda tactics vis-à-vis Christpower Maisiri’s tragic demise. A death, which gripped the media for most of last week, suddenly just vanished. Poor Christpower!
One international website on Monday wrote, “Zimbabwe police say ‘no foul play’ in opposition fire”. Draw your conclusions in a headline, which is so telling.
Speaking at Christpower’s burial MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai challenged a named Zanu-PF official to “answer for his actions . . . ” He added, “I have already sent Minister (James Timba) in the region to tell them that you are the ones who midwifed this arrangement. It’s time for you to deliver”.
If anything it is President Mugabe who should be raising alarm bells about some of the MDC-T leader’s utterances.
Christpower – a powerful name, but for reasons best known by certain quarters, some people are getting political and financial mileage out of his tragic death.
I noted that The Saturday Herald’s columnist Nathaniel Manheru was at pains as he asked a poignant question: “Who do I pay my condolences to when the boy’s parents have not only become serious activists even before the charred remains of their son had been interred?”
I revisit the MDC-T leader’s statement, an utterance that was as reckless as some statements he made in the past – what Stuart Chase calls the “tyranny of words”.
He told mourners, “When my wife died, I was given a matchbox (not match stick) to burn the country, but I refused. The death of Christpower is a game-changer”.
The statement makes it very clear that there is a third party, and it is this benevolent third party that wanted the MDC-T leader to burn our country that we must identify.
Who was it who wanted to make a bereaved man revenge the death of his wife in such a manner? Not his local supporters I am sure, because they would have also been burnt up in the process.
The long and short is, was this a symbolic statement, or the reality is that there were indeed some people who had given Tsvangirai a weapon of mass destruction?
He might have refused in 2009, but if Christpower’s death is a game-changer, then it means that in 2013 that weapon of mass destruction can still be used?
The matchbox he rejected might also have been given to others who were willing to torch their countries, but a box is taken out of a carton. Zimbabwean cartons have 10 matchboxes. The carton could still be full ready for use after incidents like the tragic death of the 12-year old Headlands boy.
We ask why people lose it despite the horror of such a loss of an innocent young life, and why we these children have to go through all this?
The other aspect in this saga is how the media has handled it. Can we say that we have done our best in objectively informing and educating the nation about the events surrounding this death or we had our matchboxes to set Zimbabwe alight?
Right from the beginning did we answer those five critical questions that are pillars of the profession: what, when, where, how and why or, we were more interested in telling the nation that if a man bites a dog, then it is news?
Christpower allegedly died on Saturday night – February 23 well after the weekly and daily newspapers had gone to press. Thus the Sunday papers did not have the story of his death.
But on Monday, it was not a death through arson that was reported. NewsDay led with, “Political violence returns: MDC-T official’s son killed in ‘petrol bomb’. Reads the report, “A 12-year old son of an MDC-T parliamentary aspirant in Headlands was burnt to ashes on Saturday night when a house he was sleeping in was allegedly petrol-bombed by suspected Zanu-PF supporters.”
So, what pictures were circulated in Cabinet if he was burnt to ashes?
They continue, “Assistant Inspector Luxson Chananda said last night that he was not aware of the incident.” To buttress the point, MDC-T spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora confirmed, “The MDC-T is extremely saddened by the loss of a young life at the hands of cold bloodied murderers who are obviously working on behalf of Zanu-PF”.
Mwonzora was a bit careful with words and chose to say that those who did it were working on behalf of Zanu-PF. Tactical game changing!
As you read on, you learn that neighbours “suspected a petrol bomb was used.” But, there is no evidence whatsoever to corroborate that allegation about a “petrol bomb”.
If the alleged petrol bomb was thrown between 11p.m. and 12 midnight, will those neighbours repeat their claims in a court of law?
From that time, the Maisiri homestead also became a crime scene. How intact was the evidence or it had been contaminated?
The Daily News in turn had a screaming headline: “Murderers: 12-year-old killed in inferno; MDC member’s house set ablaze”.
By Tuesday and Wednesday the private media was informing readers that Tsvangirai was to “confront Mugabe”. We also had MDC-T parliamentarians casting the first stones in the august house – foregoing their responsibility. Was it for political expediency or it was another game changer?
In between these unsubstantiated claims there is a puzzle. How was it that an incident that takes place in the thick of night, so far away from Harare suddenly became a bone of contention when that same week, a 10-year old girl was raped and murdered in Rugare, Harare, an MDC-T stronghold?
Why did she not get this kind of attention when nearly all the MDC-T parliamentarians reside in Harare? How many children have disappeared countrywide and have been found dead? Why has the MDC-T not cared about these children? Was it because they could not fit the game changing mantra?
But, more interestingly is the rush to apportion blame, an act, which makes the investigators’ work very difficult because whichever way one looks at it, when the court of public opinion had been whipped into believing that Christpower had been murdered, what could change their minds? The police report has already been trashed because you cannot suddenly go back and say, we made a blunder.
Then there is the problem of accountability where we have to situate everyone attached to Christpower. I certainly hope that the police will tell us who was where and at what time – foolproof alibis. If the neighbours think that it was a petrol bomb, how did they arrive at that conclusion?
As I write, I am listening to the drumbeat and singing at a funeral in the neighbourhood. It’s only normal to imagine that those consoling the bereaved family do not feel the same as the family. We all know how it feels like when you lose a loved one. Thus I wondered how someone would have that much time to give interviews where every word is weighed, and where the words give away so much. Were these words of bereavement or this was game changing?
Had the police been furnished with the details that the media got?
I was also taken aback by the United States ambassador’s demands for speedy investigations.
Unless something was left out from the interview with the boy’s mother Beauty, it would have been best to allow her to mourn her son. But what did she do to save her children from that inferno especially if neighbours thought that it was petrol bomb? How did she account for all of them until she realised that one of them was missing?
To some readers this might sound cruel, but when such incidents happen we learn that everyone close to the deceased is a suspect until police prove otherwise, just like a person is innocent until proven guilty by the courts of law!
And to Ambassador Bruce Wharton, not so long ago I sat watching TV when Adam Lanza shot down those 26 children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary school.
I recall the news blackouts from the Police. I also recall the delays in releasing the little information that was allowed to be given out and all this was for the families’ and children’s sake. I recall the police chief and the pathologist telling the media that they could not answer certain questions. In some countries, Adam Lanza could also have been labeled a terrorist.
Why did Christpower have to be treated like this? The danger of accusing people when you do not have proof also takes me back to another American mother Susan Smith, who is currently serving a life term for killing her two children. Ambassador Wharton knows her story very well. Susan Smith in 1994 manipulated the media for nine days, giving sorrowful interviews, until pressure mounted on her to confess.
In the process, she had caused lots of damage to the community because she claimed that a black man had hijacked her children. It took talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey to unite a community that was falling apart due to that racial profiling.
I am not implying anything, but just reminding all of us that painful tragedies like this happen everywhere, but instead of hatred, let us find means and ways of rebuilding the lost trust and confidence.
But the burden lies more on the MDC-T leader and his trail of tyranny of words. Last week’s utterance was not the first one.
He seems to have a penchant for fire and burning. At the launch of the MDC in September 1999, he urged his supporters not only to stop buying and his followers burnt copies of The Herald on the terraces of the stadium.
Addressing supporters at the MDC-T’s first anniversary rally in 2000 he said, “What we would like to tell Mugabe today is that please go peacefully. If you don’t want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently. The country cannot afford Mugabe a day longer than necessary’’.
He later told journalists that when he spoke of violence he meant only unspecified mass action.