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It is to be hoped that we will not be construed as misogynous, being chauvinists or some such ungainly description — if we can help it. Let’s talk about a woman called Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga. She is a politician in the opposition MDC (not sure which) and has been around for some time. That time she has been identifiable as a fiery politician who expresses her opinions in the most possible aggressive manner.

She would well earn everyone’s respect if she did not have a penchant for picking a lot of unnecessary fights and unnecessary subjects, in essence picking controversy that hardly does her any good.

Just a week or so ago, she pulled a shocker in Parliament when she produced used underwear she claimed she had bought from the street.

We are not too sure whether the panties were not hers.

The point she was trying to make related to a request to ban second-hand underwear.

However, she did it in a most controversial manner that her argument was sooner lost in disgust and derision.

In fact she was to be whisked away from the chambers when she crossed the floor apparently to beat the living daylights out of a fellow legislator, Cde Justice Mayor Wadyajena.

That was barely a fortnight after she was accused of beating her sister-in-law at a funeral in Bulawayo.

Earlier, before that incident, Priscilla had been chastised by the deputy speaker for “speaking on top of everyone”.

Priscilla behaves like a pedestrian — not an honourable member of the House of Assembly which she must revere all the more because she did not go there via an election, but by some affirmative action which even her purported constituents in Matabeleland South did not approve.

The fracas she pulled off quite demonstrated her ungainly behaviour in Parliament.

Now, many women did not even pity her, less so feel represented by her.

Nor do the people of Mat South, whom she seems all too eager to impress by stoking tribal fires as she deludes herself that she is a Ndebele — which is her mother’s tribe.

And how many times she has fought in Parliament trying to make that point, including preventing an MP from Matabeleland from speaking in Shona!

But the delusions and Priscilla’s confusion go deeper.

Last week she was in the news arguing that children should not be given their father’s surnames.

Here was her point: “I don’t want to continuously apologise for being Ndebele because somebody has decided that your definition is Shona because the sperm that produced you came from a Shona man.

“I am not saying that the sperm did not come from Misihairabwi. It could very well have; but it may not necessarily have been. If the definition of Priscilla is by her name, then I am going to get a Ncube name.”

“I am not joking,” she says, “This is going to be serious debate.

“I am going to get a Ncube name! That is my mother’s name. It is my name. It is in my blood line.

“I am certainly going to be doing that just to make that point to say there is nowhere where it is written that you have to take your father’s name only and that the definition of who you are as a person is by your father’s name.”

She argued further: “My comment about the insistence of people to give a person a father’s name is that it suggests the mother is a lesser being.”

If this were a college debate for would-be feminists, it would make sense.

But to come from a seasoned politician!

It is tragic.

And which woman would say they are being represented well by this kind of politician?

No sex
But that is not the end of it.
In 2013 she had another bizarre proposal.
It was in June, just ahead of elections.

She said: “If your husband has not yet gone to register to vote then you must deny him his conjugal rights. If he does not have a registration slip to show that he has registered then do not give in.”

That apparently did have few takers.

Many people would promptly laugh at such a suggestion — and coming as it does from a widow.

Some would happily suggest in turn that she tries that act as a way to relax her raving mind.

But this is not to trivialise the huge problem that Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga has.

She actually needs help and all our prayers.

Early this year, she confessed to a local weekly that she was having mental problems.

She admitted that she was having clinical depression.

She told FinGaz: “It is not a dark secret. It is true that I was diagnosed with clinical depression and a panic disorder for which I am under medication. This is common in people who have gone through trauma. I went through trauma; I went through many things including that whole process of inheritance battles when my husband died.”

It is in this light that we have to understand our Priscilla.

She is a mental patient who needs not only our patience, but also somebody close by to monitor how she takes her medication.

Which she must, for the better of everyone.

More than Cecil
But Priscilla’s outrageous behaviour the other week has been overshadowed by attention to our beloved cat called Cecil, the only lion and big five animal in the country that tourist came to see.

We mourn his loss.
And as we mourn this loveliest creature of all time, Washington Post, like all international media is mourning with us and giving handy advice.

“Let Cecil the lion’s death shine light on Zimbabwe’s human rights abuses,” counselled Wapo, as it is called.

“Assuming Zimbabwe won’t make the news again until dictator Robert Mugabe finally dies, allow me to capitalise on Cecil’s demise with a quick rundown of the country’s atrocious human rights record,” writes one Brian Pellot.

The run-down includes the curse of having “dictator” Robert Mugabe as our President; we are told “Illegal discrimination keeps many women out of the workforce”; “gay sex is illegal” we conducted “land reclamation mess”.

“If after reading this you’re still crying for Cecil the lion, conjure up a few tears for Zimbabwe’s 14 million quadrillionaires who wake up each morning to Dictator Mugabe’s economic and political tyranny,” the authorities in Washington tell us.

So much about our lovely lion, we will be mourning for ages to come!