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This may be a familiar tale to those who attended public school: a particularly naughty guy, taking advantage of the absence of a teacher goes a gear up and stands in front of the class — or on top of a desk — and preaches whatever gospel according to him. Classmates cheer him on and clap and perhaps whistle and ululate.

Only he may sooner find the class dead silent around him.

The headmaster would have walked in from a blind side, or shown his face from a window in a corner.

The guy, suddenly aware of the silence around him turns around and lo and behold, the (usually) most dreaded of species!

Humiliation. Punishment.

Thank goodness corporal punishment has been made a thing of the past. It was not a pretty past.

False heroism
We were beginning to sense the excitability of one Didymus Mutasa over the past couple of weeks when President Mugabe was away on holiday. Much like the naughty schoolboy, Mutasa fell from grace last year amid revelations that he belonged to the putschist cabal of disgraced former Vice President Dr Joice Mujuru.

Last week, at the height of mischief and rebelliousness, Mutasa issued a Press statement calling for the nullification of the zanu-pf 6th National People’s Congress and its leadership and urged the restoration of those who had lost their position in last year’s purges. He besmirched the legacy of President Mugabe and announced he represented all that had rebelled against zanu-pf — a call for the rallying of all opposition against the status call.

There was hubbub. Excitement. Pandemonium.

The cheer leaders were many, from the private media to politician-academic Ibbo Mandaza who we hear was part of the process of drafting the unfortunate Press statement.

President Mugabe came back on Thursday.

He immediately read the riot act to “poor stray braying ass” Mutasa. Dumb Mutasa is finished. Sadly, he doesn’t seem to be physically disposed for it, as we shall soon discover.

But is that not price for false heroism, Dutch courage?
When reporting illness becomes sickness itself
Speaking of the return of the President who announced that the First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe was unwell and recuperating, having undergone a procedure in Singapore, we were taken aback by the fixation of the media on such a banal subject. Yesterday, about all private titles screamed with the announcement, all betraying a celebration at the news.

These of course are the same media that have been savouring the illness and rumours of death of President Mugabe.

The Zimbabwe Independent even went further to claim that “Mugabe has major op”.

No doubt, this kind of reportage has become a sickness in itself.

The interest is inherently unhealthy, there are also pseudo-prophets that have been wishing the death of President Mugabe, pathological.

Where is the economy in this?

Is it not ironic that the same media that were complaining that President’s holiday should have been cut short are the ones that push the economic agenda from the front pages the moment he walks in?

We had headlines such as, “Where are you, Mr President?” (Daily News, January 22); “Come and deal with floods, Mugabe told” (Newzimbabwe.com, January 4). And when he came home the same media announces what President Mugabe has told them!

It’s such a sickening irony and one of the instances we must accept that maybe we deserve whatever mud critics of the media are throwing at us. The Daily News’ attempt to bring back focus to its earlier reports of “a rising chorus of criticism of the nonagenarian’s continued absence” in the face of “the country’s myriad challenges had seemingly worsened by the day in his absence, largely as a result of his ruling zanu-pf party’s escalating factional and succession wars”, makes it worse.

After wasting so much ink on a non-issue like the First Lady’s illness cutting and pasting a tired, self-serving story background, doesn’t help much.

Pesky Patrick
Maybe there is an even better way to deal with “stray braying asses”, to borrow President Mugabe’s expression.

Just laugh it off!

This is what Patrick Zhuwao taught us this week as he laughed off the seriousness of Didymus Mutasa as a political entity and his Press statement as a political testament.

We are told that at a discussion in Harare on Thursday on the subject of zanu-pf factionalism, Zhuwao, who was a panellist, “occasionally hung his head, giggling derisively at comments by the other co-panellists (sic)” and this prompted Mandaza to rail at him that this was a serious meeting as zanu-pf faced it’s biggest crisis blah blah blah.

Zhuwao reportedly said he was better off attending to his tobacco barns on his farm than spend time and energy speaking about an insignificant Mutasa who was still in denial that he had fallen from grace.

“You try to simplify reality,” Mandaza is said to have charged, annoyed.

It appears, though, that pesky Patrick had the last laugh and also had help from other comrades there who not only demonstrated that the media event that Mutasa had created for himself, and possibly for and with Mandaza and his vested interests, could not constitute a crisis. They say laughter is the best medicine.

What’s in a name?
On the subject of anger and other strong unpleasant feelings such as jealousy, one may call to mind one man of that said emotion, Jealousy Mawarire. This Harare man, who shot to fame two years ago when he made the Court application that gave us the July 31, 2013 elections, has not been in the best of public moods, at least as reflected in his writings in the media.

Only, his is just one subject: that betrays some deep bitterness towards the person of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo. He was at it again this week.

Check his blog and you find three stories, “

Moyo’s salarygate based on political ambitions”, “Moyo should let editors do their work”, and “Weevil toxins eating Zanu-PF from within”. Four days ago, he wrote in the Daily News about some “Gang of Four — Threat to national security”. It has not found its way on his exclusively anti-Minister Moyo blog.

Perhaps, Jealousy needs to discover some medicine to whatever is gnawing him, perhaps including jealousy.

Besides, this is not how a Rhodes scholar behaves!

Hypocrisy
And, lastly we liked this sympathetic editorial canned from Atlantablackstar, detailing US hypocrisy over jailing a man that allegedly was lobbying for the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe which a congresswoman called a racist measure to maintain white privilege.

We are told: “But in a country where there are lobbyists for every morally bankrupt activity imaginable — there are lobbyists paid exorbitant sums to convince public officials to let the banks rip off consumers as much as possible — it feels unseemly to send a man to jail for asking some public officials to consider lifting sanctions. After all, in a public memo written by the US State Department itself, the department claims that the sanctions against (President) Mugabe and company are in no way intended to halt individuals from doing business with the country.”

Bruce Warthog, sorry Wharton, and co try to tell us also that sanctions do not hurt the ordinary people.

Only they lie, the hypocrites!