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Mr Mwonzora

Reason Wafawarova
AS a writer one must never be guided by the need or the want to be published, but by conscience, principle, objectivity and fairness. Boot-licking is the easiest way to get published, especially for political writers seeking the publicity that comes with newspaper columns, but boot-licking does not in anyway constitute a writer.
The newspaper that publicises a writer becomes to the writer the hand that brings food to the mouth, and biting such a hand would naturally trigger starvation consequences, not necessarily in financial terms, but many times in kind.

When a writer is scared of biting the hand that feeds his stomach, he inadvertently licks the boot that kicks him around — forcing him to write humiliating blandishments and biased platitudes in favour of the interests of the publisher — all the name of intellectual authorship.

In the latest of political scandals in the country we have ZANU-PF feuding with luscious ‘thief executive’ officers running state owned enterprises. The profligacy in state owned-companied has been christened “salary-gate,” and the MDC-T has responded to this corruption hullaballoo by emerging with its own “lettergate” scandal — a deadly endeavour designed to blindly and resolutely defend and sanitise the shortcomings of Morgan Tsvangirai.

Many have erroneously written that the MDC-T president is battling Elton Mangoma, the author of a letter whose contents have brought out corybantic demons out of Tsvangirai’s henchmen, the likes of Chalton Hwende and reportedly Nelson Chamisa. In fact what Morgan Tsvangirai is fighting is democracy and its principles, not the author of a letter that made a democratic challenge on his leadership. The MDC-T leader is simply not prepared to be on the receiving end of democratic hard times, all because he is obsessed with fame-bringing democracy, where he alone enjoys the supreme right to lambast the shortcomings of all others.

Hwende has become the indisputable boot-licker-in-chief for Morgan Tsvangirai, and we want to take some time interrogating boot-licking politics.

In a ZBC interview on the eve of his 90th birthday, President Mugabe bemoaned factional politics in ZANU-PF, and he described as “shameful” the fact that someone can pride himself or herself as a factional leader.

Not long after the harmonised elections, Zanu-PF conducted elections for its leadership executives, and the media covering of those elections closely rivaled that of the harmonised elections. Victory after victory was attributed to the victory of one factional don or the other, and never to merit on the part of the contesting individuals, or on their capacity to deliver.

There was a time in Zimbabwe when people would rise from the ranks of the masses as development-oriented leaders, and on that merit they would rise through the ranks of political leadership.

Then came in Masvingo province with the asinine politics of greatness and ego in the 80s. What started as a Chevron Hotel joke by a drunken politician who would routinely ask patrons to shout who the political leader of Masvingo was,(“Ndati mukuru weMasvingo ndiani?”) slowly developed into a huge feud between two great sons of the province, both of whom are now late. It was a pointless ego war that was left unchecked for a very long time, and it spawned the monster we have today in factional politics. My paternal uncle who is one of my two surviving fathers was once the Zanu-PF chairman for Chiredzi District, and in those days the Chevron-based Masvingo factional don used to frequent our house in Triangle in the company of many of Masvingo’s political greats of the 80s, some of whom are still in the game today, including my uncle, who now holds a leadership position in our beloved Ward 12 in Bikita West. He is the revered councillor there.

This writer would sit in the kitchen or veranda of the house, both of which were quite close to the lounge where these politicians would spend hours back-biting their opponents and plotting how to eliminate office holders that did not belong to their faction. It was sweet childhood eavesdropping listening to these TV people (as we knew them then) talking like common gossipers for hours on end.

They would unanimously endorse Nelson Mawema as a bootlicker politician who was said to be in the habit of carrying bags of provincial rumours and gossip to Harare, allegedly for purposes of gaining favour with the national political leadership of the day.

This group would meticulously link their various totems until everyone was a relative to the other, of course for the all important purpose of adding a blood link to their political gangsterism. Even us children all ended up closely related to each of the factional members, and I was quite happy to share the same totem with the factional leader, who like my uncle is to me today, became a natural father.

At that time factional politics was a preserve of Masvingo province, and the rest of the country largely derided the practice. It was common for people to shake their heads in disapproval during breaks at meetings, and simply grin and say, “Masvingo yema faction.”

Little did we know that the scourge would spread to become a national plague of catastrophic levels, and that we would have a day when the entire political landscape would be taken over by self-serving boot-licking stooges at the command of factional dons.

As at December 2013 we were informed that the eighth parliament had debated 13 motions all in all since its inception in August, and of these only two came from Zanu-PF members, regardless of the fact that the party has more than a two-thirds majority. The startling comment attributed to the party was that the reticence from the Zanu-PF MPs was a result of fear of unspecified repercussions. When national issues are sidelined at the expediency of political survival we know that the country is in untold bewilderment.

The preached principle of democracy has literally been thrown out of the window at the MDC-T, with Morgan Tsvangirai disappointing more than he has ever done before, and that is on countless times.

Tsvangirai’s integrity and reputation have been immensely diminished by his misguided decision to throw the decorum of leadership to the wind and to barbarically go after Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma, especially after the later. We hear that Biti’s house has just been petrol-bombed, and speculation is high that Tsvangirai’s hoodlums could be responsible, although no arrests have been made yet.

While Zanu-PF has scores of provincial dons commandeering its structures at that level, the MDC-T has its national leader reducing himself to a deplorable gangster surviving on hooliganism and roguish brutality carried out by his fanatical hoodlums. He has promised some “music” for them, and not many people are waiting for that. Too many times in the past Tsvangirai has overruled punishment and sentences against members of his loyal militias.

The decision by Tsvangirai and his dangerous advisers to go to war against Elton Mangoma over his letter, and to go personal against the man, does cross the threshold of decency in general, and of democratic tenets in particular.

To have Douglas Mwonzora, Luke Tamborinyoka and the likes of Chalton Hwende publicly defending the frightful attack on Mangoma is boot-licking taken to unacceptable levels. Hwende daily derides Mangoma for reporting the thugs that allegedly bashed him to the police, suggesting that Mangoma is acting in betrayal of the entire MDC-T. In short Hwende asserts the MDC-T stands for violence, and that Mangoma has betrayed that cause.

Many people have openly reprimanded Chalton Hwende and appealed to him to stop acting like a perfect fool, but the more Hwende is admonished the more his insanity seems to multiply.

Instead of being misdirected by confusion-infested people like Hwende, Morgan Komichi and Murisi Zwizwai, Tsvangirai needed to exercise leadership over the Mangoma letter.

It is said in other climes the MDC-T leader could have simply issued a terse response to Mangoma’s letter either denying the assertions raised, or simply saying the observations raised by Mangoma had been noted, and that the party would study them and then engage Mangoma in confidence on the way forward.

But Tsvangirai’s advisers obviously criminalise criticism against the man, and in this game of political cultism Mangoma is simply a bandit that deserves a thorough knocking of sense into his rebellious head. And he got one!

Reality is one thing Tsvangirai and his boot-lickers cannot stand, and that is why for years they have been in denial over the ruinous effect of the illegally imposed Western sanctions, preferring to call them “restrictive measures,” and in typical such denial, Tsvangirai and his sidekicks deny that Elton Mangoma was beaten up by rogue Tsvangirai aligned youths — explaining he was only “yanked,” whatever that means.

My late friend and sister Rachael Simbabure whom I closely worked with in the public service used to say, “Hanzvadzi work hard the way you are doing upinde mutswanda yaVaMugabe.” She herself was fast rising into the executive corridors of power, and deservedly so too. She was a hard-worker.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.