Zimpapers Logo

SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
OUR Production Editor, Gareth Willard, who has been with this newspaper since the ‘70s when I was just a toddler and covered the collapse of Ian Smith’s regime and the dawn of our Independence, is widely considered to be a huge fountain of knowledge at this organisation.

A professional to the core, he tells you right in your face, sometimes with a touch of irritation, when you mess things up and is also always there to tell you when you get things right and excel beyond expectations.

It’s a measure of his sheer brilliance, and ability to continuously reinvent himself, that he has remained relevant to the challenges of the production line of our newspapers today in a world completely different to the one he stepped into when he first arrived here.

A workaholic, he is a fine specimen of the combined old-school and new-school and one minute he is yelling at you, when you are behind deadline, and the next minute he is telling you a great story as if that fallout didn’t happen at all — a perfect example of how not to carry grudges.

On Tuesday night, amid the wave of euphoria that swept through the streets of Harare transformed into a late night summer carnival by partying Zimbabweans celebrating the resignation of our former President Mugabe, Gareth banged into my office.

We hadn’t yet drifted past our deadline, but Gareth was carrying a message for me and, as usual, he delivered it with the same authority and frankness he usually carries when dealing with issues related to our work.

“You know very well that tomorrow’s (Wednesday) newspaper is not going to be sold by what you guys are giving us,” he thundered, a smile struggling to break from his face.

“It’s all about the politics and we have even increased the print run and so I expect all your stuff to be in early so that the sub-editors can quickly deal with the sports section and then they can deal with the political stuff that we are carrying tomorrow.”

I told him that I had sent all our stuff and, crucially, I was conscious of the fact that we would not be the selling point the following day because whatever stuff we were going to publish would be overshadowed by the seismic political events of the day.

I even suggested if he could consider a front page for The Herald the following day which didn’t say much, but said so much, just a picture of Mugabe and the words — THANK YOU AND GOODBYE — immortalised by the News Of The World newspaper of Britain in its final edition after its forced closure of the telephone bunging scandal.

We have always prided ourselves as a huge selling arm of this newspaper and to concede, as I did on that night in my conversation with Gareth, that the events of that day had blown away our appeal, in terms of readership, the following day when this nation would be consumed by this political drama than anything else was, indeed, monumental.

But that was the reality, as simple as all that, because there are times when sport is forced to take a back seat to some major events unfolding around it and not even this climax of this riveting domestic Premiership battle — which will see either Dynamos or FC Platinum being crowned champions of this country — could dwarf the political events that have been unfolding before us.

After all, football was forced to take a back seat during the two World Wars, as thousands of footballers signed up to fight for their countries, and the World Cup wasn’t even played during the entire course of World War II while the English FA Cup and league championships were scrapped between 1939 and 1945.

Even the legendary Moses Chunga postponed his visit to Belgium, where he is set to be honoured by his old club E. Aalst amid indications he could get a stand named after him, because he wanted to be around to see the whole political drama unfold.

He even wrapped himself in his national flag last Saturday and joined an estimated two million protesters who flooded the streets of Harare to show their solidarity to the intervention by the Zimbabwe Defence Forces because, he says, football cannot try to turn a blind eye to such a movement.

And the shadowy administrators of the DeMbare Dotcoms Facebook page — the most popular and biggest social media football fan page in the country — then posted their theme phrase “NYIKA YESE IRIKUFARA,” which means the whole country is happy — after the announcement by Mugabe he had finally tendered his resignation as the country’s President.

Kirsty Coventry, the country’s greatest athlete of all-time, simply tweeted #MyCountry #OurCountry #Zimbabwe as the political drama unfolded while former cricketer Henry Olonga’s song, “Our Zimbabwe,’’ has turned into one of the songs of the revolution and is being played regularly on national television.

A POLITICAL REVOLUTION THAT HAD A SHAKESPEAREAN TOUCH

In the end, the political drama that culminated in former President Mugabe handing in his resignation on Tuesday, amid the explosive cocktail of an impeachment drive from legislators, isolation from a Cabinet that had dumped him and the sheer pressure from the people, resembled a latter-day version of William Shakespeare’s tragic play Macbeth.

And, in that play, just like in the real life story that unfolded in this country, a power-hungry wife — blinded by her obsession with the quest to transform herself into the be-all-and-end-all of a dark plot to parachute herself into command — provided the domineering character to the landmark events scripted four centuries apart.

The irony of it all is found in the similarity in the initials of the names of these two characters, as if fate bonded them to rise and fall in such striking resemblance — the “M” in Lady Macbeth and the “M” in Grace Mugabe or, before her marriage into the throne, Grace Marufu. Witches, the unbridled quest for power, the shadow of murder, the prophecy of taking over power all combine to feed into the plots.

Okay, for those who are not familiar with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I will refer you to the online shopping giant Amazon and if you go there you can read an analysis of the book and they tell you that it “is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, set mainly in Scotland, the play dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake.

“Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, and tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland.

“Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion.

“The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of arrogance, madness, and death.”

Lady Macbeth, just like the former First Lady, were both consumed by a lust for power, a belief in their lie that fate had destined them to the throne — by all means necessary — leading them to not only playing a leading role in their demise, but also make some great mistakes along the way.

Nothing was allowed to stand in their way, so much that they dominated their husbands with their ambitious drive and relentless quest for power at all costs.

“Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening female characters,” notes the online site sparksnotes.com. When we first see her, she is already plotting (King) Duncan’s murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband.

“She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. At one point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself.

“This theme of the relationship between gender and power is key to Lady Macbeth’s character — her husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to link masculinity to ambition and violence.

“Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband with remarkable effectiveness, overriding all his objections; when he hesitates to murder, she repeatedly questions his manhood until he feels that he must commit murder to prove himself.

“Lady Macbeth’s remarkable strength of will persists through the murder of the King — it is she who steadies her husband’s nerves immediately after the crime has been perpetrated. Afterward, however, she begins a slow slide into madness — just as ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the crime, so does guilt plague her more strongly afterward.

“By the close of the play, she has been reduced to sleepwalking through the castle, desperately trying to wash away an invisible bloodstain. Once the sense of guilt comes home to roost, Lady Macbeth’s sensitivity becomes a weakness, and she is unable to cope. Significantly, she (apparently) kills herself, signalling her total inability to deal with the legacy of their crimes.’’

DIFFERENT ERAS, SIMILAR CHARACTERS

Writer Kenneth Deighton notes that, “of all Shakespeare’s female characters Lady Macbeth stands out far beyond the rest — remarkable for her ambition, strength of will, cruelty, and dissimulation.

“At the commencement, she has far greater strength of will than her husband. While he hesitates and is distrustful of his powers, she never wavers. She needs no supernatural temptations to urge her on. While reading her husband’s letter, she determines on the course to be pursued, and nothing turns her from that course until the goal of her ambition is reached.

“She appears to be perfectly aware of her own strength, and of the influence which she possessed over the weak will of her husband.’’

Just like Lady Macbeth, our former First Lady was driven by her unbridled quest for power and she took a leading role in the purging of many of those she considered to be her major rivals for the throne by orchestrating their expulsion from the ruling party.

She became the centre of power — everything had to happen around her or include her as the driving force — for it to succeed and nothing could turn her from her course, even when it was clear she was making monumental blunders, with her toxic tongue the weapon that whipped many into submission.

Some analysts even suggest that she took advantage of the former President’s advanced age to drag him towards doing things which had the potential of backfiring badly, including the axing of the then Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, for allegedly plotting to topple Mugabe.

Others even accuse her of harbouring a streak of cruelty, like Lady Macbeth, who called for the Devil to fill her with murderous demons when she heard that King Duncan was on her way to visit them.

“The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance

of Duncan

Under my battlements.

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal

thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown

to the toe topful

Of direst cruelty!’’

Like Lady Macbeth she became the ultimate symbol of State capture, the power behind the throne, with the authority to even pronounce judgments on matters that were pending in the Judiciary and ridiculing the military as a powerless institution that couldn’t stop her from her mission.

“It may have ended differently, but the uncouth displays of ambition by some of our lady friends pushed a desperate country a bit too far,’’ Edmund Kudzayi a strategist and journalist noted on his Facebook page in a frank admission of the former First Lady’s toxicity in this whole political battle.

Mugabe looked lonely and isolated towards the end, the decision by the majority of the Cabinet members to snub his call for a Cabinet meeting scheduled for Tuesday, was a tough one to take and, coupled with the impeachment process and relentless public pressure, gave the signal that the die was cast.

And, in the end, Lady Macbeth’s words to her husband, after she had forced him to kill the King, would have provided the fitting closure to all this drama.

“How now, my Lord, why do

you keep alone,

Of sorriest fancies your

companions making,

Using those thoughts which

should indeed have died

With them they think on?

Things without all remedy

Should be without regard: what’s done, is done.’’

Yes, what is done is done!

A PEOPLE WHO REALLY LOVE THEIR COUNTRY

When it comes to raw and undiluted love for one’s country, I have always argued that there are few nationals in this world who can be said to be better than us.

It shows in the way people of this country, we love and support the Warriors, for all the shortcomings of the team on the international stage where they failed to qualify for the Nations Cup for more than 20 years and have only been to the continental football showcase just three times in 37 years.

Many other nationals would have long turned against such a team or even abandoned it, but not the people of this country and even in these tough economic times, they spare their hard-earned dollar to converge at the National Sports Stadium in huge numbers every time the Warriors are playing at home.

That our main rivals, Bafana Bafana and Chipolopolo, have both been crowned African champions in the past hasn’t diluted the massive interest that we have for our Warriors and, in fact, it has even spiked the interest that we have in our team.

Some, like Alvin “Aluvha” Zhakata, even go on long and dangerous road trips from Harare to Rwanda just to support the team in a tournament like the CHAN finals which, in some countries across the continent, is considered a second-rate tourney that is just a distraction to such an extent that Egypt even pulls out of its finals, set for Morocco next year, because they don’t want to disrupt their domestic league programme.

There was a time, not so long ago when, on average, we had the highest figures across the entire continent when it came to attendances for the national team matches.

In case you doubt that, just check the small number of fans who usually turn up for the Bafana Bafana games and when you consider that this is a team that has not only been AFCON winners, in the past, but has also been to the World Cup finals three times, I hope you can understand what I am trying to drive at.

We even believe Peter Ndlovu is some sort of a King, simply because he is the best footballer we have ever produced, and more than a decade since he quit international football, after serving his country with distinction, his popularity continues to grow.

And when they play even an exhibition match, as was the case in that game against the Barcelona Legends recently, more than 40 000 of us converge at the National Sports Stadium to watch the action.

The outpouring of happiness on the streets all week has been quite a spectacle and brought back memories of the huge crowds that gathered at the airport to give the Warriors a rousing send-off on their flight to their maiden appearance at the Nations Cup finals in 2004.

What a beautiful week this has been and on such occasions even the climax of the domestic league championship race today tends to take a back seat because these are the rare moments, like our Production Editor Gareth Willard rightly pointed out, when sport takes a back seat to events bigger than ball games.

After all, the whole country is happy.

God bless Zimbabwe!

To God Be The Glory

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooo!

Text Feedback — 0772545199, WhatsApp Messenger — 0772545199. Email — [email protected], Skype — sharuko58

• Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. You can also interact with me on the informative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, where I join the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Craig “Master Craig’’ Katsande every Monday night at 21.15pm.