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Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga. She is quite irresistible, isn’t she? Her male contemporaries will quickly get ideas in their heads.

But then she is irresistible to everyone in the public spheres of Zimbabwean life.

She is the kind of person that, if you would not have noticed, she will make your head turn and you look involuntarily.

She is a woman. A beautiful woman.

She is a politician.

She is an activist, a typically passionate, combative and outspoken one.

She is a feminist.

She is all of these things — including a mother and other familial roles — and it makes her stand quite apart from her colleagues.

Think of a woman legislator who would bring underwear, a used sanitary pad or a baby to Parliament.

It is those moments that you won’t resist Priscilla, even in your disgust: a kind of disgust that you cannot get enough of!

Thank goodness she is not one to be openly stripping like a street woman.

Like a Tabitha Khumalo, say.

Yet still her female sexuality remains an asset and weapon: to turn you on, screw you or throw in your face.

And she knows it.

Did she not at some point urge women to deny their husbands sex so that regime change could be achieved in Zimbabwe — perhaps the first of that kind ever?

She likes us to know that there is nothing wrong in being a woman and use the same womanhood, if anything, to achieve certain goals.

Or simply that sex ought to be enjoyed for its rawest, carnal purpose.

And is that not being the ultimate feminist?

A bedroom manual

Priscilla is the coordinator of some outfit that is rallying women to get representation and to vote for their own in the forthcoming elections.

The platform, on the face of it, does not know parties.

It is for the advancement of the women’s cause.

That is what she told us at some point.

We had asked if this was not yet another “coalition” front.

And she is drilling into women ideas about sex.

Like that they must have as much sex as they like — with whomever!

That’s according to a story on Newzimbabwe.com

She also advised women not to be sex shamed and bullied.

“If you have a sex tape, one or twenty, share with a friend and say be prepared it may come out,” she reportedly told a women’s meeting this week.

“And you know, when it comes out, we as women, we must rally and support that woman victim.”

She advocated freedom when it comes to sexual relations:

She said: “Men have set the bar when it comes to a number of sexual partners they sleep with, therefore its game on.

“It does not matter whether you have slept with a Zanu-PF person or whether you have slept with five people.”

There we go!

But you have not heard the juicier part.

Last month, Priscilla was giving the very self same advice to Joice Mujuru former vice President and, the widow of decorated general Solomon Rex Nhongo Mujuru!

Priscilla is a widow, by the way.

(A happy “free spirit” one, apparently.)

At a discussion forum in Harare she revealed that she had “refused to live the life of a nun simply because her husband passed on.”

And she has some handy advice for Joice Mujuru.

“I have said this kuna Amai Mujuru lets stop pulling men with us, not men in the party . . Our dead men (husbands).

She added, “If I was Joice Mujuru today, I would go back to my original surname that I had . . . And I have actually said to her drop this nonsense of saying I am not going to date, can you stop it.”

“Date, have somebody and have pretty good sex with someone, because men are doing it every other day, who says we have to be angels? We have to be in a nunnery.”

Understanding Priscilla

That is rather too hot to handle!

That is Priscilla Misihairabwi Mushonga.

Perhaps we need to understand her.

In January last year, she gave an illuminating interview to Daily News and she sought to explain herself.

All she needed was to get her points clear and get the necessary action.

“This is why I have said to people, when they say I am an attention seeker, I say yes I am, I’m wanting somebody to listen to what I’m talking about and I will go out of my way to do so, because I have realised the traditional way of doing business doesn’t work. I have used it for the past 15 years, it hasn’t worked.

“So I have decided any time I get an opportunity to grab attention to force people to listen to the issues I am raising, I will use it in the most radical way and sometimes people don’t necessarily like it. I’m not asking for people to give me accolades, I don’t care actually. The fact is that you have listened and hopefully you will do something if you are someone in power.”

And when it came to relationships she admitted:

“I have struggled with relationships; I think I have probably only started dating…So there are times when I am lonely, you know, it would be nice to just be seen out, but again, even now that I have started seeing someone, you are always questioning yourself, can I go out, can we do dinner?”

Such an ordinary woman!

Such an irresistible human being!

A bad alliance

We have excerpted the above from the Daily News of January 18, 2016.

There is something else that is interesting in that conversation.

Priscilla talks about a possible coalition among opposition parties and suggests that she will not partake of it, believing as she did that it was not driven by the right ideals.

Not properly configured.

Here she is: “. . . I don’t necessary agree with the view that we should just get together for the sake of dealing with Robert Mugabe.

“I would rather be in a small political party that speaks to certain values, than be in this big political grouping that has no value system. So let’s not just deal with personalities, let’s not just deal with individuals, let’s deal with a value system, let’s deal with ideology, and which is why there is no harm to have different political parties that have value systems.”

Twenty months on, this week, Priscilla still has the same views.

The MDC Alliance, the latest attempt at consociational politics in the opposition is bad, according to her.

She will not be part of it — even when her party MDC of which she is a legislator — appears all too keen on it.

She is quoted on Newzimbabwe.com as saying:

“I don’t care if they call me Zanu-PF and say I want to derail the whole process; I really don’t care, even if they say she is CIO. So sometimes I can’t even comment on some of those things and say this is wrong.

“Don’t you think there is something fundamentally wrong in seven men standing up and say we are standing up and we are asking you to define a new Zimbabwe, with no woman standing up?”

She accuses men who converged at the Zimbabwe Grounds for having “picked each other, went to some corner, somewhere, and we don’t know where it is, defined the agreement and ran with it.”

The mother who

dislikes a coalition

There is trouble around the idea of coalition.

For all the prayers.

For all the tears.

It just won’t work: despite, or rather because, that there is a Morgan Tsvangirai.

There is a lot of antipathy around the idea of an alliance with Tsvangirai at the helm.

Newsday just told us this week that Mai Mujuru is refusing to be Tsvangirai’s deputy.

She had her convention recently and she is walking legitimately tall.

She says she won’t be railroaded into a coalition.

There could be no road, rail or otherwise any kind of way, after all.

Pity the idea of the grand coalition or big tent!

Even Nkosana Moyo is not impressed.

In fact, he is not even looking for predictable rent in it.

That’s telling.

Yesterday, we reported the former Industry Minister pouring scorn on the idea.

He said: “Others are coming saying are we not splitting the vote, form an alliance with Morgan (Tsvangirai MDC-T president) and so on and so on,” he said, picking a woman in the crowd to illustrate his point.

“When you chose your boyfriend, did you say other guys who were pursuing you should eliminate themselves?

“They didn’t, but you chose one, right. So, the issue of saying coalition, as if Zimbabweans are not smart enough to choose, I think is an insult to all of us, it’s an insult.

“Because we are implying that we shouldn’t have a choice, that choice should be eliminated up front so that when we go to vote there is only one person remaining.

“So, a coalition is a completely misguided argument, I believe even my uneducated mother can choose from the choices available the president who can move us from the prevailing problem. My mother knows that, so we don’t need a coalition for that.”

Let’s not also forget that Tsvangirai’s supporters believe that he can go it alone and does not need a coalition.

Fanatics have actually been dissuading him from such a move.

It makes the whole affair rather twisted.

So knotted.

Ugly.