@Jamwanda2 on Saturday: Child-Man, come now, conclude!
@Jamwanda2 on Saturday
A sage called Boswell
An anthology titled The Great Age of the English Essay, edited by Denise Gigante, includes an essay by one James Boswell titled, On Concluding.
Its opening sentence struck me as perspicacious: “To retire in proper time from any state of exertion is one of the most nice and difficult trials of human prudence and resolution.”
The essay is prefaced by an epigram in Greek language which, when translated says: “Come, now, Conclude!”
The epigram is traced back to Aristophanes, the father of Greek comedy.
Zimbabwe’s golden diplomacy
Americans must be suitably frustrated to learn that their latest round of sanctions —auxiliary sanctions — on Zimbabwe which their Secretary of State Blinken announced last week, have met with utter indifference by the intended victim, Zimbabwe.
Auxiliary sanctions because these so-called sanctions relate to marginal power to issue visas, making them impotently administrative.
Much more, they make Zimbabwe’s tat to any American tit so easy and instantaneous to frame and execute. But these are the smalls of the stand-off. The bigger matter comes as the loud silence on the part of the Zimbabwe Government.
Never in interstate affairs has silence been more appropriate, and passing for hardest hitting diplomacy. Thank you Zimbabwe, my beloved country!
Why gladden America?
Zimbabwe’s response betokens a country which has moved on; moved on beyond fussy and whining victimhood, to full and self-confident agency.
A confident country does not define its personality or get defined through some spontaneous squeak to every poke administered against it, however sharp or insistent this might be.
Mature nations live in the expectation of hostile acts, thus fortifying their constitution, position and defences. The world owes us no goodwill.
After all, a fret, a squeak, let alone the pitch of either, passes for satisfying feedback to the assailant. Why gladden him?
Suffering for ceteris paribus?
Second, any affliction based on travel restrictions implies the victim’s appetite and propensity to travel and visit the country of the assailant.
Frankly, such an appetite or propensity is demeaning; it lowers the victim’s self-esteem.
The least we can do for ourselves is to bear those odious, illegal sanctions with dignity. Not bawling!
Outside UN fixtures — and these run on obligations of host status than on whimsical American goodwill — there is little or nothing to be got through visits to hostile America.
America has elected to spurn all our overtures and re-engagements efforts. That’s its prerogative; the same way it is also ours to decide we have done enough to seek and court its friendship and goodwill.
At the time of imposition of American sanctions, interaction between our two States and economies, though potentially strategic, was not determining either way.
We cannot, as Zimbabwe, wallow in the psychological constraint of what might have been, which has never been. All there is is just that — a psychosis of hope and faith in the power of the ceteris paribus!
The power we have, but do not know
Third, moving on in the sense of the realisation that this country will turn on its own means and ingenuity.
And it turns out there is poverty in neither. We are a well-endowed country; we have gone quite some way in conquering and acquiring skills that make national self-development durably possible.
If anything, it is what we have — not what we lack — which makes us America’s obsessive concern. A resource-barren Zimbabwe would never have been of any interest to America.
Far from suggesting our inherent weakness, American sanctions against us are provoked by the strength we have, tragically one which we often do not know or realise.
The little we know about that strength has made us truculent in the eyes of America; the more we are yet to know or grasp surely makes us defiantly look America in the eye, thus becoming even more liberated, independent.
We are not very far from getting to that stage.
The villainy America teaches . . .
Fourth, Zimbabwe is slowly re-aligning her foreign policy to her governing philosophy.
We cannot brag that, Nyika Inovakwa neKutongwa neKunamatirwa Nevene Vayo, while instinctively kowtowing, praying and offering benediction to some Deity made in Washington, by way of our foreign policy.
Simply, it projects a Janus face: hollow bravado on the one side; impotent, mortal, quiescent fear on the other.
Time is long past when the villainy which America taught and gave us, is not fully executed and reciprocated by us, to adapt a well-known Shakespearean phrase.
Some god so far away from us
Fifth, even our friends and allies elsewhere in the better world, will respect us for standing steadfastly on principle, self-belief and confidence.
Each time we wail when America gives us the slightest poke, we reveal to a watching world our deep desire to be in America’s good graces, our craving to be endorsed by this one hostile State which isn’t even our neighbour, literally or metaphorically.
We need a good 15 hours to reach America’s shore, even then after a gruelling flight with a refuelling stop-over.
Why would a country so far away, both spatially and in terms of diplomatic affection, play god to us and our fortunes?
What are we saying to genuine friends and allies when we exhibit such fastidious concern and backhanded grovelling?
We convey doubt in the utility of our bilateral and multilateral affinities with them, do not we?
We don’t need American prophylaxes
This new-found diplomacy through indifferent yet defiant silence, must now permeate all our institutions. Including in our authorities running our National Health Sector.
Often we get abused and pay too much for some little medical donations we get from America which, given the sum damage this levies on our self-esteem and national argument, is not worth even a dime.
After all China and India — not America — have become the world’s apothecary or pharmacy. You don’t need “made-in-America” prophylaxes to heal better or best as a Zimbabwean.
We proved just that during the Covid-19 pandemic. An effective polity reacts in toto, through all its systems, including where it procures toothpicks we use to poke remnant fragments of meats enjoyed, once stuck between our dentals.
Young man called Cucsman
There is some young man whose X persona is Cucsman, or in Twitter lingo, @CucsmanM. He confesses to Malawian parentage, but was born, bred and educated here in Zimbabwe.
He is our national, therefore. All that quite apart, he is toxic on X, very toxic, including excoriating corpses of his perceived opponents, who reflexively are always Zanu PF.
I already know his digital graveside speech for me, should I precede him in bidding farewell to this lovely world. He is Triple C; bigotedly so. A staunch votary of Chamisa, to the marrow.
Today I give him the honours of quoting him in my piece, notwithstanding the animus he routinely exhibits towards my person, even though we are yet to meet in real life. And God forbid we ever do!
Ngatidzokere paDrawing Board
Yesterday he posted some X (tweet) which read: “Ma strategies edu haasi kushanda ngatidzokere pa drawing board, titsvake plan chaiyo otherwise tinochembera tichingosimbisana nhema.”
Roughly translated he said: “Our strategies are not working; we need to go back to the drawing board for a more efficacious plan, lest we all age falsely fortifying ourselves through self-flattery and lies.”
A master of expressive excesses, he illustrated this dire post is by some battered boxer, irredeemably felled and prostrated by stunning blows.
Vertigo
The post-election months have not been good for Chamisa, the embattled leader of Triple C. His world is in topsy-turvy, and continues to spin vertiginously.
Expectedly, his supporters suffer acute vertigo, including his most dedicated and tenacious, his most bigoted. Like Cucsman who has evidently reached his tether’s end.
I sample him precisely for his militant cast in supporting Chamisa, all to suggest how wearied Chamisa’s supporters now are.
Letter drafted by Glen Mpani
I could also bring in a fellow communicator — Glen Sungano Mpani, who plies these nether streets as @glenmpani.
He is the polar opposite of Cucsman, possibly politically, and certainly temperamentally. Yet this usually suave if not phlegmatic gentleman tweeted the following open letter to Chamisa, which he entreated him to seriously consider.
It is a draft letter which Glen suggests should be issued by Chamisa to all his supporters. It reads: “Dear Party Supporters, I want to express my sincerest apologies for failing you.
It is evident that we have not been completely honest and transparent. The party is in dire need of a complete transformation.
We must take time to reflect, establish a professionally managed secretariat, devise a comprehensive strategy, reform our leadership approach, and improve the quality of our leaders. It is essential that we become better listeners and seek assistance when necessary.
I apologise once again and assure you that I will reach out soon to initiate a fresh start. We cannot achieve success through quick fixes. Instead, we must embrace a new beginning grounded in active listening and a collective mindset.”
What the gilded draft letter means
Mpani is no stranger to political communication. Suffice to say recently he assisted two parties in our SADC Region to win power. He thus knows how to read politics and prospects of politicians against an unfolding national scene. But he is also a master communicator. You only need to be a good student of communication to see the import of the draft letter he recommends to Chamisa.
Or more directly to know that little else remains of Chamisa politically after embracing and despatching such a letter suggested to him.
It is Glen’s pointed way of counselling abdication, but all of it gilded in, and garnished by, gushing politeness. And of course you do not have to be a genius to know that these two opinions I have sampled while standing on extreme ends of the opinion pendulum, are in fact starkly coincident on main points regarding what needs to be done to save Triple C, from Chamisa mostly, ironically.
The law of the unintended
I am not the one saying it. Rather, Chamisa’s most tenacious supporters, represented by Cucsman, and his intelligent, watching by-standers, represented by Mpani, both feel it is about time Chamisa looks elsewhere for some new direction and exertion in this life.
Exploiting where I sit, I happen to know this opinion has become prevalent, normative, including in corridors which until now have given Triple C succour.
Worse, it is also held by his peers whom be bludgeoned with a mallet.
Here is Welshman Ncube, less than 24 hours ago: “The laws of unintended consequences are harsh, cruel, and unforgiving!”
You are hard put to find any ounce of sympathy or empathy. There isn’t an iota of commiseration coming through from Chamisa’s erstwhile comrade, on his current predicament. A retributive gloat, in fact. This is how erstwhile comrades in Triple C have fallen out!
Hopewell, Fadzayi, Mtata
I don’t need to quote Hopewell Chin’ono’s letter which bristles with open indignation, published in some online platform, NewsdzeZimbabwe.
Or Fadzayi Mahere’s tortuous, circuitous and convoluted thread on why the Chamisa-led Citizens’ National Assembly, CNA, should not do the final self-immolation rite of biting off the nose to spite the face. Significantly, Mahere’s perorations suggests a Triple C arguing against itself on the eve of some critical by-election!
Nor do I need to cite Reverend Mtata whose desperate release from Chamisa’s abject failure took the form of a self-exiling religious flight and odyssey to faraway lands.
The Child-Man who cannot conclude!
Which gets me to want to restate James Boswell’s plain yet deeply perspicacious observation: “To retire in proper time from any state of exertion is one of the most nice and difficult trials of human prudence and resolution.
Every man of any classical education recollects the well known allusion to a horse growing aged, who ought no longer to be pushed on to the race lest he should be left behind breathless and contemptible.
But the misfortune is, that self-love deceives us exceedingly in the estimation of our mental abilities, so that we cannot be easily persuaded that they are in any degree decayed.”
I am only a donkey; I elect to leave matters to humans. Oh clever Child-Man, know thyself!
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