Zimpapers Logo

It is the Fox’s sour grapes mentality that we are seeing coming from some of our former comrades, who in their quest to avoid justice, are now attacking the Government saying that they cannot lead

Nick Mangwana
There is a classic fable with a very moral lesson that comes to mind when it comes to one professor and his sidekick. We will repeat the fable here before talking to these two miscreants more directly. As one calls themselves a professor and the other rates themselves really high as a “fundi” to even name themselves as “a Think Tank” one would want to believe that they have heard it before. After all their game is all about sour grapes as the fable goes.

“One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard and he came to a bunch of grapes just ripening on a vine, which had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the things to quench my thirst,” he thought. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour!”

It is from this reaction by the Fox that today we talk of “sour grapes”. It is the sour grapes that we are seeing coming from some of our former comrades, who in their quest to avoid justice, are now attacking the Government saying that they cannot lead.

Like the Fox, they jumped and shouted at nine Interface Rallies plus a White Garment Evil Fiesta on a Sunday, but they could not have the grapes. Today they have gone on a campaign of spite. Maybe this week it is good to talk to them directly by making this an open letter;

Dear Professor Terrible & Sidekick
Every game has its rules and you win or lose by the same rules. It is those rules that give your victory legitimacy or delegitimises your defeat. You guys went about setting the rule of any game that you played. Everyone played per your whim. You played unfair, you kicked and you scrapped and even hid the pieces. You were on top of that game. However, you lost now you call it a bad game. You want everyone to believe that the sweet bunch of grapes you see like and can’t get is now sour because you can’t have it. That’s rather sad.

The problem is that during the game you broke the rules and committed crimes. The rules you set were that when your side is strong you don’t account for your actions, you have both immunity and impunity. These are unpatriotic rules, they are unjust and jungle in nature, but you used them anyway. We call on the winning team not to sink to your pathetic level and hope they won’t use them. But it’s going to be a big challenge because it is you who made the game itself a zero sum game.

This again was according to the rules set by none other it’s a winner takes all and the loser has to fight to the death. That is what led President Emmerson Mnangagwa to make that guerrilla journey to Mozambique again in a spiritual pilgrimage to his revolutionary alma mater. A 75-year-old man had to make that 40km long trek while running for dear life. You called him names and made him a fugitive from justice when there was not a single warrant against him; there was no case before the courts. But the rest is history. We are here now.

You lost the game and now you are trying to burn the game board. It doesn’t work like that. You set the rules of the game, but you don’t get to set them after losing. You are now propelled by hate and spite that you would rather the country burn than have the current administration succeed. You are consumed with so much burning aversion and dark hostility towards the team that vanquished you that you cannot see beyond your nose.

This is not good for the country; neither is it good for you. Your resentment has now caused you to be estranged from reality and you are now indifferent to the truth. You did not only lose the battle of wits but you lost privileges.

Some of the privileges you lost were the court sessions being held at rallies where your “supreme judge” would declare that you had no case to answer. Well, you have a case to answer and if you have to claim any moral superiority then come and have your day in court. But just the same way you avoided justice and got convicted in absentia in Kenya and you are evading the hand of justice in Zimbabwe.

It is justice that the people of Zimbabwe want and not vindictiveness even against people as unsavoury as the pair of you. While you played the game of persecution by prosecution, Zimbabweans hope that the last chapter of the book on Politics of Spite has now been written. But prof, you had a case to answer when you left, you shall answer for the case when you return.

You used the political muscles around you to avoid your comeuppance, but are now politically emasculated. It is this political impotence that eats at you.

It gives you sleepless nights and the feelings of toxic resentment against your own Government that you would not hesitate to throw out baby Zimbabwe together with the bath water. You would not give a second thought to burning the sleeping hut in a bid to kill the alleged bed bugs. You turn to your default weapon of choice when all else is lost; Gukurahundi.

You served a constituency that was affected by the insurgency of the early ‘80s and the excesses of the operations that followed. Never once did you raise a motion in Parliament regarding the issue of Gukurahundi. You sat in the same room with the man that was Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces during the operations. There is no record of you tabling that issue on any forum be it Politburo, Cabinet or even as a backbencher in Parliament. We are sorry that you lost your father.

May His Soul Rest in Peace! But that is unlikely to happen because his name somehow always appears and becomes important on Twitter. Please tell us this writer he is wrong by informing same that you had a conversation about your father with the man that was Commander-in-Chief during the operations on his doorstep the buck stopped. What did he say when you mentioned your dear father? And do you know that your side kick is his nephew? If you did not raise it with the man himself then forgive this. You are either insincere or a lousy son whose father’s legacy is secondary to political ambition or a political cheapskate who does not hesitate to use his father’s memory as a cheap tool with which to whip rivals.

There are genuine national healing issues needing to be addressed. But these are not expedient political weapons with which to ‘inconvenience’ rivals. Victims on both sides deserve so much better. But the problem between the two of you is conceit. It is even worse for the professor.

You have created a myth around yourself, your intellect and political prowess. I am afraid that has been debunked. Your myth is gone. And you want revenge but you cannot get it. This has taken your humanity away.

Professor you have become terrible because you are suffering from an incurable persistent feeling of hatred and loss.

Your fight is not a fight for the common good. It is a hegemonic struggle. Even your friends whose fight was rent seeking behaviour are struggling to identify with this expedition of hate. You will only find an ally in one whose family had power and has now lost the privileges that came with such power.

But combined into a duet of hate your twosome forgets that they say, when you seek revenge, dig two graves, one for yourself. Because you have chosen hate speech as a political tool against those you disagree with. Now you come up with outlandish statements as a means of settling personal scores. Your poison pen now spreads petty ill will against your country and everyone in it. You are cutting your nose to spite your face. Blind fury has made you oblivious to that which is good for the country.

Every well meaning Zimbabwean is looking for consensus on how to rebuild our country. There will always be a need for alternative voices. But that alternative voice is not one that spews hate and vitriol in a self-serving excursion of hate.

We know banishment from home, from one’s people and from everything one has worked for would naturally generate bitterness. But this is self-imposed banishment. Comrades, come back and help rebuild the country as well as face the law where there are cases.

Happy New Year, Happy New Era!