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Christopher Mutsvangwa

A young popular musician is stoned and chased away at a burial site in Zimbabwe.
The story torches off massive speculation about the musician and his relationship with the deceased, a former employee, and how he is handling his growing fame.
The youthful musician is also dragged into politics and is accused of siding or sympathising with one of two dominant factions in the ruling party.

Amid the frenzy, the matter spills into Parliament.
One honourable member accuses a counterpart of masterminding the attack on the musician.

For his own part, he says he would not take a similar attack lying down.
Actually, the bigger matter is about welfare of legislators — and the Zimbabwean legislator is broke, hungry and angry.
Unless they have other sources of income, legitimate or otherwise.

The first honourable member picks on his rival, who has attempted to smother debate about the condition of the legislator and this does not go down with others, so the incident degenerates into chaos.
It is chaos that shuts down the House.

A very senior politician is even shouted down for his pains to explain a technical matter and he is seen as viewing the same through factionalist lenses.
Both these instances demonstrate how there is some now widespread truism that Zimbabweans are currently in a foul, acidic mood, hence the resort fighting and venting off anger publicly.

Reminds us of one Nathaniel Manheru, who used to occupy these pages.
Last year, he wrote that this time of the year is bad for the national mood and psyche — and this was even historical.
He told us that nature’s inclement, tinder-dry outlook would, or could, rub off onto the populace.

He wrote:
“The Rhodesians called it the suicide season. Zimbabwe’s springtime. Particularly the month of October when temperatures soar exponentially, and then peak . . .
“Rhodesians transposed this inclement condition to the human temperament. In that sweltering heat, they reckoned the national temper to be short, to be highly combustible . . .

“And the Rhodesian syndrome? Check your record: all agitation scenarios for oppositional capital have always been set in spring, preferably the hottest months of September and October. There is a clear script founded on a psychoanalytical presumption of greater irritability of the native mind in about that period.”
Interesting! We could use that reference to point to a number of things that we have witnessed lately and over the years.

Ibbo Mandaza

Opposition party formation. Agitation. Hope. Desperation.
And when our honourable MPs want to fight in Parliament over their pieces of silver — and perhaps musicians — we know the national temper is very high.

From bad mood to madness

Let’s budget for that souring of the national mood as occasioned, we presume, by the elements.

However, there are some people who have not been able to handle their sour, bitter conditions are doing things that are patently a cause for concern.

Christopher Mutsvangwa is a mad man.

In the political fights that we have witnessed, and which also led to his expulsion from the ruling party Zanu-PF, we have seen that he cannot handle himself.

And with this heat (and perhaps whisky, too) he has gone overboard.

A few days ago he shocked us when he “invited” ex-Rhodesians to come back and “rebuild” Zimbabwe.

Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong in that, as Zimbabwe would need all that can work for her, but we know the context of Mutsvangwa’s assertions, as we shall see.

He was quoted as saying: “We want them (Rhodies) to be part of the next governance in Zimbabwe, because this country had been run on a scotched earth policy by the G40, we now want it to recover and for us to build a new country.

He adds: “We are also reaching out to the white Diaspora and the white business community, they used to run an economy and they are organised and they have the experience. If we can bring those and the new Diaspora into play then the country will stabilise and will start recovering from the ravages of G40.”

He goes further to court Western countries and the opposition.
“We are also aware of the MDC constant urban vote since 2000 and its appeal to the urban youths who are part of the future. We say we now need each other.”

Two basic things stem from this: Firstly, it becomes very evident that Mutsvangwa has become so unhinged and deranged in his hatred for the so-called G40.

For some of us who have no role in those fights, we know that Mutsvangwa and his ilk like Matemadanda have been tactless and rather foolish and allowed their hatred for and antipathy with certain characters cloud their better judgments.

They may also even have caused collateral damage on some political careers that did not exactly need their tactless and deranged activism.

Now Brother Chris — which is the second point flowing from this — is arrogating himself the role of political commissar for some cause that is hard to define.

Nobody takes him seriously.

Nobody takes him seriously because he is deluded and apparently his group or associations have been denuded of all manner of glory and power they believed they possessed.

And it is down to the poor choices and leadership from the likes of Mutsvangwa himself.

A part of us, and we have never shied from expressing this, do not believe that Mutsvangwa is a bad fellow — he just needs to swallow his pride a bit and rescue himself from his madness.

And about Ibbo?

Now here is the funny part. We are made to understand that Commissar Chris went into a diplomatic offensive that saw him spending some three months in South Africa where he was foraging for support for his hybrid experiment.

According to The Standard of October 29, he made overtures to Ibbo Mandaza through a South African minister Jeff Radebe.
Last week, Mandaza had a field day exposing this plot.

He told the paper: “An official from minister Radebe’s office called me to ascertain whether I knew Mutsvangwa and if we were working together on our NTA (National Transitional Authority) initiative. I told him I knew him, but we were not working together on the NTA.

“I told him our idea of an NTA was non-partisan and that there was no way we could work with Mutsvangwa, especially with the public knowledge that he was working to impose (Vice President Emmerson) Mnangagwa as Mugabe’s successor.

“It is our reaction to the invitation to work on the Mutsvangwa NTA model that incensed Mnangagwa, hence his vilification of Sapes with unfounded allegations that we are a CIA-linked think tank in his shallow Politburo presentation.”

We can see Mandaza, who has failed in his preferred role as a kingmaker at various stages of our post-independent history, taking extraordinary delight at being thrown in the limelight. This animal called NTA is thoroughly dead in the water, and has not had any takers apart from Mandaza and his friends. Now to think that Commissar Chris was desperately trying to ride on it is unbelievable. Surely, this is a mental case!