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Joice Mujuru

WELL it looks like our lady Joice Mujuru is turning out to be the proverbial young boy’s hard on, which swells with false promise only to dissipate as soon as the young one takes an early morning leak. Joice who, after 34 years in Government, 10 of which were spent as Vice President, is still of little name recognition. Almost all newspapers have to prefix her name with “former Vice President” not as Joice Mujuru.

That in itself is very telling of the stout lady from Mt Darwin, even Egypt Dzinemunhenzva fares well on that score.

Anyway yesterday Joice all but threw in the towel by changing her party’s name from Zimbabwe People First to National People’s Party, leaving the Rhodesian black, good ole Mutasa and Ngidi Gumbo with the name Zim-PF and ostensibly all the party regalia and office.

Of course, minus a party leader. Mutasa and Gumbo are in the market for one given that they are as charismatic as a bar of soap!

In giving up Zim-PF, Joice effectively suffered her third defeat even before contesting an erection, sorry elec- tion! (All this talk of mating in Zim-PF tends to mess up one’s mind).

Joice’s first shellacking was of course in Bikita West, the second in a council by-election again in Masvingo, and now this! Adopting a party name that conjures memories of PW Botha’s infamous National Party.

Where is Zimbabwe, where is Africa in that nomenclature?

Joice, of course, is in good company given the blandness of the MDC-T.

Well, one can only wonder, what name Joice will contest under by the time election 2018 dawns given she is throwing coquettish eyes at Tsvangirai, the legend whose exploits conjure memories of late Zairean dictator Joseph Mobutu, he who called himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu waza banga (the cock that never leaves any hen untouched)!

But that’s none of our business if Joice runs a leg from Mutasa to be with Morgan. They are all have-beens.

And NPP also looks set to go the way of Mavambo/Kusile/ Dawn, whose beginning was effectively the end.

Eat politics
So this week the man from Belgium made it clear that to Europeans it is not the welfare of the ordinary Zimbabwean that matters but the interests of his kith and kin back home.

For how else can one explain Phillipe van Damme’s audacity to announce a $5 million largesse for the political NGOs in Zimbabwe at a time villagers countrywide are reeling from the ravages of rampaging floods that have destroyed houses, schools, hospitals, roads and bridges leaving 246 people dead?

The answer is simple, those villagers do not matter, they have traditionally voted zanu-pf anyway.

What matters in the Anglo-Saxon scheme of things are ‘non-governmental individuals’ like Sten Zvorwadza, the suit-wearing, self-proclaimed vendor without a stall; Partson Dzamara, the brother profiting from the fate of his brother, so to speak, and one Linda Masarira . . . whose real vocation is unknown serve for the fact she has many kids to her name.

Tsvangirai’s Damascene moment
Whether it was the reality that struck him from his purported countrywide tour to solicit views about entering into a coalition with Zim-PF (now NPP) or whether it was out of realisation that the EU had singled out NGOs leaving his cash-strapped party from the feeding trough, Morgan Tsvangirai had a message for his supporters, zanu-pf will win 2018

Well, he didn’t use those exact words but anyone who knows opposition-speak will realise that where the opposition alleges rigging, they will basically be saying “we are beat” to use boxing lingo.

For those who may have missed it, Tsvangirai was quoted in the Daily News, a day after Van Damme’s announcement, claiming Zanu-PF was already rigging Election 2018!

This was a throwback to Didymus Mutasa’s September 14 2016 statement as NERA spokesman where he also claimed zanu-pf was rigging 2018.

How an election that is still to be called can be rigged, only these sages know.

It, however, is not difficult to understand this opposition-speak.

Mutasa spoke after seeing NERA fail to mobilise for a shutdown of Zimbabwe which is why opposition hoodlums ended up going on orgies of violence in a bid to make people fear venturing into the streets en route to work; while Tsvangirai spoke after seeing, first-hand the results of Government’s Command Agriculture programme for A2 farmers, and the Presidential Inputs Support Scheme that targets communal farmers.

Zimbabwe is headed for a bumper harvest which spells disaster for the MDC-T’s politics of the stomach.

A well-fed voter will not be swayed to trade his/her birth- right for a plate of food like the biblical Esau.

Therein lies the key to all the opposition’s self-fulfilling prophecies.

They know they are toast.