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My Turn with Tichaona Zindoga
THIS column had been seriously considering to have a note on one Webster Shamu, the erstwhile political commissar of Zanu-PF. Shamu cast a forlorn figure at the just ended 6th Zanu-PF National People’s Congress where he was embarrassingly exposed for just how low he had sunk in Zanu-PF. Ordinarily, an occasion of this nature would have brought out the best in him as he sang praises to President Mugabe and compare, if he chose, which he did, to compare him to all things pleasant, like that coffee creamer we know as Cremora.

On December 6, 2014, Webster Shamu was not singing any praises, even deceptively. He did not have to. His fate had been sealed, and he knew it. Having been caught conspiring to overthrow the very man who he would deceptively compare to the finest palatables, he knew that his time in the spotlight had come to an end, and he was set against 12 000 eyes to mock and indict him.

Which was done and guilt weighed down on poor Webster Shamu like a huge boulder on the neck as he witnessed his fall from grace.

In Shona, we have an expression to depict such a scenario where one feels the acute pain of assault or punishment. It becomes “nzwira pamuviri shamu yarova dapi.”

Dapi is a vlei rat or more specifically, the Southern African Vlei Rat (Otomys irroratus), a big, ugly but edible fatty rat.

One can assume that, because of its size, the unfortunate rat takes the full wrath of the hunters rod or some such hunting implement, as it tries to dash for safety: it takes the pain full bodily.

That is about the vlei rat and the hunters rod and its fatal blow.

And isn’t it ironic that Shamu, whose name depicts this deadly instrument, becomes a victim of a higher power administering full-bodied punishment on him, well deserved punishment? At a time that he, as commissar, should have been working to unite and strengthen the party he was busy dabbling in factionalism.

That is the fate of Shamu, as we learnt, as we long suspected, that he was painfully dealt with by his party Zanu-PF yesterday.

Spilling the wrong blood

Not that Shamu, the Postal and Courier Services Minister, was the biggest casualty of the purge yesterday in Zanu-PF and Government. Joice Teurai Ropa Mujuru, who until yesterday served as the Vice President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, was the biggest loser as President Mugabe flexed his muscle to clear infidels in the revolutionary party. The most damaging accusation against Mujuru was that she sought to spill the wrong blood, as her name depicts, as she has been implicated in a ploy to assassinate President Mugabe if he did not soon enough vacate office for her. How ungrateful for someone who has been minister since the age of 25 in 1980, to become Zimbabwe’s youngest ever Cabinet Minister.

She held various Cabinet portfolios including Water Resources Management; Youth, Sport and Recreation; Community Development and Women’s Affairs; Information, Posts and Telecommunications; and also Acting Minister of Defence and Acting Minister of Agriculture — the only female to hold these posts in the history of Zimbabwe. In 2004, Mai Mujuru was elected the first female Vice President of Zanu- PF and subsequently appointed as the first female republican Vice President. She may have felt a little too eager to land the ultimate post and has been involved, as early as 2006, in plots to oust her superior and benefactor, President Mugabe. Is it because he told her to aim higher? (we have also learnt that she was the natural succession choice, before her nefarious activities, including the 2008 Bhora Musango activities began stinking to high heavens).

Ironic “weevil”

Didymus Mutasa, the former secretary of administration in Zanu-PF has his claim to fame as having led the Cold Comfort Cooperative Society initiative in the later stages of the liberation struggle, along with Guy Clutton-Brock, the first white Zimbabwean national hero. At independence he became the first black Speaker of Parliament until 1990.

He has also been MP in Mutasa North and lately Headlands constituency while also a member of the President’s office, holding various ministerial positions exclusive to the office. Ironically, this key person in President Mugabe’s key and inner circle became one of his secret enemies. Ironically, he called for the “gamatoxing” of “weevils” that President Mugabe decried were eating into Zanu-PF from within. Gamatox is a banned toxic substance used to terminate grain borers. As it has emerged, Mutasa was ironically a weevil himself, who sought to destroy President Mugabe and the Zanu-PF party from within. Not prayers, or even feigning illness or that of his wife (or not) could save his scalp.

He fell yesterday.

Out to roast

Nicholas Goche, has been left to roast in the cruel, open sun, as his name depicts. He has been named as one of the masterminds of the people who sought to assassinate President Mugabe. Goche told sugarcane union leaders in Chiredzi that guns would be fired in the run-up to congress and unnamed people will be flushed down the toilet. Since the sordid revelations, Goche was taken ill with hypertension and has been holed up at a private city hospital. Intelligence sources say that he is as good as picked up for treason. He can linger longer at the hospital but he basically has nowhere to hide.

And did you know, as war veteran leader Chris Mutsvangwa recently schooled us, that Goche was a Rhodesian criminal who was the first person to benefit from Executive pardon and does not have much revolutionary background having worked within Rhodesia during the liberation struggle? He was later to hold different key ministries including National Security.

He most probably knows the ins and outs of such national security hence the recruitment into the team to do-in President Mugabe. Yet he has to not only roast, but burn, for his sins.

Boiling over, out

Former Energy Minister Dzikamai Mavhaire is a bundle of contrast and confusion if his name were to speak for him as his first calls for temperance while his surname depicts a boiling over. Now, this is what makes the maverick called Dzikamai Mavhaire who was fired from Zanu-PF in 1998 for calling, in Parliament, President Mugabe to step down. He was re-admitted in 2005 and became senator for Masvingo. Last year he became the Energy Minister. Interestingly, working against President Mugabe, as late as he has been implicated in, is not new. He is a treacherous little man who is open to foreign enemies. This is what a WikiLeaks cable says of him “Historically open to Embassy contact, Mavhaire is an independent voice that has been highly critical of flawed government policies. SUNY interlocutors expect him to provide a voice of reason in the upper house and to contribute to the reform process…”

Now, his lack for temperance owing to his knack for treachery has seen him boiling out of the Zanu-PF pot.

Deceptively cool

One of the people who fell by the wayside yesterday was Francis Nhema, an uncannily cool guy, at face value, who speaks with the same cucumber coolness. He is one of the Zanu-PF guys called “moderate”, a code word for those amenable to manipulation by the opposition and their foreign masters. Having been appointed Indigenisation minister he did pretty nothing, prompting the just-ended congress to register disquiet over the manner he handled the empowerment vehicle. He would shrug off such concern, on other days, and proffer an alternative as a less radical leader than the likes of Saviour Kasukuwere.

No doubt, he did all this for the benefit of foreign opponents of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty and self determination. And by the way, apart from having chanced on being an in-law to the late Father Zimbabwe, Nhema has pretty little to write home about.

One could say the same of Olivia Muchena, a former Abel Muzorewa woman, to whom Zanu-PF has been benevolent with ministerial appointments and other favours.

As for Simbaneuta Mudarikwa who was last year made Provincial Minister of State for Mashonaland East, well, he has just been passed by for standing by the wrong guys.