Senator Gutu lamented with astonishing frivolity his involvement in the inclusive Government, describing the whole experience as a “roller coaster of frustration, provocation (and) anxiety . . .” It is not clear who the inflictor of these feelings is, but impliedly it could be Senator Gutu’s political rivals within the inclusive Government.

It does not serve Zimbabweans much to hear that all their leadership in Government is riding a roller coaster frustrating and provoking each other to anxiety. We do not eat that and we did not vote for that.
More than three years as deputy minister in Government, Senator Gutu sadly says the only lesson he has learnt is “to appreciate that one should never be too trusting.” This writer’s four-year-old son Taro appreciates this common sense without any much of assistance. He has figured it out at four.

If it has taken three years of tax payers’ money to get Senator Gutu to pick up this childhood lesson, then we have grossly underestimated the much publicised mediocrity in the MDC-T.

This writer is certain that the generality of Zimbabweans have equally learnt not to be too trusting of politicians like Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai — whose only notable achievement in the inclusive government has been to prove to all and sundry that he is a man with something between his legs and nothing between his ears.

In all fairness there is immeasurable nobility in Senator Gutu’s assertion that there are in Government “sharks and looters who do not care one iota whether or not the ordinary citizen can afford at least one square meal a day.”

Equally plausible is Senator Gutu’s observation that in Government there are “plunderers and greedy and thoroughly corrupt bureaucrats who have absolutely no shame,” like the bureaucrats who double dipped                 in sourcing funds for the renovation of a high pr               ofile recently occupied mansion in Highlands,                       Harare. The occupant is our Prime Minister.

It is the reticence of Senator Gutu on the habitual looting ways by MDC-T officials in urban councils that is worrisome. It is not enough to rhetorically write about “women and men of no shame,” without mustering enough courage to tell us about the hyper-corruption of the likes of councillors in the Chitungwiza city council for example.

It makes it no better when Senator Gutu decides to backdate the problems of corruption in the current inclusive Government to the looting days of Zanu-PF officials well before the MDC-T decided not to be outdone by gleefully joining in the fray.
It simply makes no sense for Senator Gutu to tell readers that he has met “sharks and looters” in “this Government,” and then go on and on narrating about the looting by Zanu-PF officials in the eighties and in the nineties. For a start the Senator did not see this looting happening because he was not in Government then.

He should have told us more about the looting he has personally seen, and at that he should have cited specific departments and pinpointed specific suspects and culprits. That would make Senator Gutu the true patriot he vacuously claims to be.
Senator Gutu was audacious enough to blame all our economic woes on looting politicians, adding, “It’s not sanctions. Stupid. Sanctions? What sanctions?” The

Senator’s sense of pure logic is that ten years of economic strangulation by Western countries had a zero effect on the economy of Zimbabwe, was totally benign, and should not even be talked about.

This writer’s misguided belief that lawyers cannot be stupid has been badly exposed by the Senator’s banality.
We must blame ZDERA as an act of corruption by our looting politicians, and we must blame the blocking of all international credit lines on our thieving leaders, and we must blame the decision by countries like Australia to halt trade with Zimbabwe squarely on the shoulders of stealing politicians.

So the Gutu logic goes, and the man has the audacity to poke other writers to critique his sense of logic. This is what is exasperating and mind boggling, to borrow Senator Gutu’s complicated vocabulary.

Then came the dioramic rhetoric on Zanu-PF’s “thirty two years of misgovernance, corruption, and looting . . .” While it is true that Zanu-PF has had questionable policies, has been tainted by corrupt Government officials, and has had evident cases of looting               by some of its members, it is plainly myopic to suggest that Zanu-PF’s rule has had no meritorious attributes at all.

Senator Gutu’s is a lawyer today because Zanu-PF stopped white dominance and segregation at the University of Zimbabwe Law School, Zimbabwe tops Africa’s literacy rate today at 93+ percent, and that is because the literacy policy was a priority of Zanu-PF at independence and continues to be and the country has clinics within a 10km radius throughout the country because Zanu-PF had a sound health policy from the day Zimbabwe became independent until today. This is just to mention a few of the achievements by Zanu-PF, apart from the historic land reform program.

For someone who holds a law degree to pontificate so much in such a deplorably unjust manner is quite telling. Senator Gutu recalls with scorn the popular “Mauya Mauya Cde” independence song and laments the betrayal of freedom fighters by politicians with selfish and illicit objectives.
He could have added the song “Famba Tsvangirai tiende” by London based MDC-T supporters who are now making a raucous call for the stepping down of the scandalous womanising Tsvangirai.

In reference to post-independence corrupt political leaders, Senator Gutu wrote about “fake fly by night revolutionaries who were solely guided by their voracious appetite for corrupt, selfish and primitive accumulation of private personal wealth.” The Prime Minister must be counted among the fake fly by night rev  olutionaries for affording to give Lorcadia Karimatsenga Tembo a lifestyle worth US$15 000 a month all by herself, according to her court claims for maintenance.

Added to this Tsvangirai can afford US$1 400 per month for the upkeep of his love child with Bulawayo woman Loretta Nyathi, and he was until recently paying US$1 500 rentals for a South African lady he picked from the dungs of the ghetto in a love affair well diarised by the woman.
This writer has had little, but exclusive access to some of the contents. Someone is working on a book on this and soon we will be reading.

It is a wonder that Senator Gutu chooses to take our young readers down the lane of the exploits of dead and ageing yesteryear corrupt politicians while blatantly overlooking the voracious exploits of the politicians of our day. That is politicking on the sad side of life, and it is not funny.

And someone must investigate who owns the companies supplying Zimra with gadgets to implement Minister Biti’s initiatives on tightening the tax system on corporate bodies. The less said about this the better for now.
Quite correctly, Senator Gutu writes about “hoodlums and low lives amongst otherwise genuine and well-meaning revolutionaries.”

But instead of taking all of us down memory lane to “hoodlums and low lives,” who infamously mingled with our true revolutionaries from Mozambique at independence in 1980 Senator Gutu would have done readers a service by highlighting the presence of “hoodlums and low lives” within his own MDC-T party, the likes of Emmanuel Chiroto and his colleagues in the Harare City Council.

It is sensational, but inadequate for Senator Gutu to tell us about people who have “externalised billions of dollars to faraway places in the Middle East, as well as the Far East, without even mentioning the specific destinations of these externalised funds, or more importantly hinting who exactly is doing this.
Unverifiable assertions are meaningless from a legal point of view, and it is flummoxing to read this mantra from the pen of a seasoned lawyer.

In a bizarre stunt of desperation, Senator Gutu vainly hailed Ian Douglas Smith for establishing “one of the most sophisticated and industrialised economies this side of the equator.”

He was talking about Ian Smith’s economy under the UDI sanctions, an economy that was anchored by Vorster’s illicit interventions from South Africa, and by the cheating ways of the United States and Britain — two countries that continued to buy Rhodesia’s chrome in breach of UN sanctions.

But Senator Gutu thinks Rhodesia survived because of Ian Smith’s wizardry on “effective import substitution policies,” whatever that means.
In an apparent gesture of electoral fear, Senator Gutu acknowledges that Zanu-PF has regained popular support. He wrote: “Zanu-PF has misused and abused the inclusive Government to resuscitate its waning political fortunes.”

He further moaned and lamented, “My fellow countrymen and women please lend me your ears.” By reading an article in the paper?
Anyway, he hopelessly pleaded through his mournful pen, “ . . . make sure that our mighty motherland is saved from Zanu-PF misrule and cleptocracy,” so the motherland can be delivered right into the hands of the MDC-T’s corrupt leaders, and right into the dirty hands of the philandering sex addict Morgan Tsvangirai.

Zimbabweans we have a hell lot of a choice to make don’t we?
Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa could be left greening with envy at the accuracy of the Obert Gutu prophecy that Zanu-PF will bring “total Armageddon” on the MDC-T when the party wins the 2013 elections. Senator Gutu wrote that a Zanu-PF victory “will be total Armageddon.” That was precise.

In a laughable gesture of desperation Senator Gutu wrote that when Zanu-PF wins the 2013 election “then forget about Zimbabwe.” And why must we forget about our own country? The Senator answered in absolute terms.

He wrote, “Zimbabwe will be permanently forsaken to the ranks of failed African States such as Somalia,” meaning of course forsaken by the MDC-T Western handlers.

Realising the possibility of readers seeing through his shallow sense of analysis Senator Gutu exclaimed quite emphatically, “I am not hallucinating!” Indeed you are Senator. Its time you stop it.

In concluding his hilarious piece the Senator bravely declared “The enemy (Zanu-PF) is annihilated already,” and one wonders what the endless pleading and begging was all about if the enemy is an annihilated one.

The little Africanness left in Senator Gutu’s politics made him claim Maoism and revolutionarism; otherwise the glaring and pellucid treachery of MDC-T politics becomes unbearable.

Ndapindura Madyira. Ndadavira mai vekubereka.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

  • Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.

 

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