EASTER Friday was the day that Jesus Christ was crucified. Christians like me use this day to prayerfully reflect on the Son of Man who paid the ultimate price to save humanity from her collective mortal frailties and inadequacies.
For me, the seminal biblical verse during Easter is that utterance on the cross when Jesus calmly mutters: “It is finished,” as He bows His head and commits His spirit to His Father (John 19 verse 30).
The seminal verse: “It is finished,” denotes an accomplished mission. Jesus Christ was the human form of God who came to live like — and among — the rest of us.
He had taught the gospel and lived it; He had performed many miracles, healing the sick and the lame and addressing the concerns of the infirm. As He hung on the cross of Calvary, “it is finished” was a valedictory statement that marked the successful accomplishment of his earthly mission.
We are holding this year’s Easter festivities when all pretence that we have a prudent government has since been busted. It is finished.
The Gold Mafia documentary has since shown that what we have in office is a kleptocracy, a government of thieves.
As a country, the kleptocratic network plundering our vast extractive mineral wealth is quite a spectacle. It spans from the very apex of the State and associated nieces such as Henrietta Rushwaya to criminal underworld characters such as Ewan Macmillan and Simon Rudland, right down to a fake comic pastor who blasphemously carries the name of an Angel.
And yon the eve of Easter Friday, we were reminded that it is possible for people to congregate and choose a robber or a thief, just as happened when a huge crowd on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion nominated a celebrated robber Barrabas to be saved ahead of the Son of Man.
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Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Barrabas of our time as confirmed by the Gold Mafia documentary, has since been nominated as Zanu PF’s presidential candidate by his party’s congress.
With neither shame nor compunction, the Zanu PF motley of thieves chose their kingpin, ED, as the presidential candidate to give him yet another chance to loot the country’s resources one more time
And talking of nominations, my fellow citizens in my rural hood of Domboshava two days ago humbled me with their massive nomination of yours truly as their parliamentary candidate. From Pote to Govera, from Zimbiru to Cheza and from Chikokonya to Muchemenyi, I say thank you Domboshava. If you say so, then I am ready to serve.
Thank you to both those who nominated me as well those who reposed their faith in my fellow citizens and colleagues Tinei Munetsi and Jorum Murape.
We are stronger together. And it holds true that there is always strength in the diversity of our choices, nay in the differences of our preferences.
Yet these were just nominations. The job is not yet done. But very soon, in the aftermath of the next watershed plebiscite, I am certain we shall as a nation collectively pronounce in a sonorous electoral verdict: It is finished.
As stated earlier, the seminal Easter verse that is the theme of this week’s instalment denotes completeness and fulfilment of a vocation. It marks and expresses the accomplishment of a mission.
In his own uniquely wicked and blasphemous way, Mnangagwa, through his continued nepotistic crusade, is loudly announcing the accomplishment of a mission. Indeed, the primitive penchant to villagise the State has awed friend and foe alike.
Mnangagwa’s long-held wish that may have been doused by his ending term to appoint his own cousin Phillip Valerio Sibanda into the Presidium as a Vice-President may well be the apt fulfilment of his personal mission to “clanitise” government.
Get it from me. The wish to appoint Sibanda was and is still there. The exigency of the moment might not allow it, but ED was at one time on the verge of doing it.
A few years ago, I named over 20 of Mnangagwa’s cousins, uncles, nephews, nieces, clansmen, tribesmen and tribeswomen who he has appointed to Cabinet and deployed to the party, to quasi-State institutions, to provincial ministries and other strategic bodies to represent petty personal, factional and clique interests.
It has turned out even the political defectors belong to his tribe and come from his original and adopted provinces. The man is simply a primitive tribesmen and any pretence that he is a national leader has now been utterly busted.
The pretence that this villager they call ED is a Statesman has now been sufficiently quashed. It is finished.
The late former President Robert Mugabe did the same when he appointed his cronies and relatives to strategic State institutions. I argued some years back that Mnangagwa “couped” his way under the false mantra that his entry to the helm of the State signified a new dispensation and marked what he called a second republic.
What balderdash!
Mnangagwa’s blood-soaked tenure has been in no way a second republic, but an insidious and more callous continuation of the first. What is only second about this so-called Republic is that the tyranny level is second to none!
This regime has simply perished its own mantra that it is a new dispensation. The pretence to novelty and “newness” has now been utterly vanquished. It is finished.
The Mnangagwa government has been claiming that it represents a break from the past, which past was evidenced by a clear State/party conflation during the Mugabe years.
But with political defectors that we saw being hosted at State House, Mnangagwa has confirmed he cannot tell the difference between the State and the party and the distinct business that ought to be transacted either at State House or at the party headquarters.
Indeed, under Mnangagwa, the distinction between State and party has now been completely obliterated. It is finished.
Under Mnangagwa, State House is now shorn and bereft of the dignity associated with the Presidential residences the world over. Under ED, State House at one time became a prime parade square of defecting mercenaries.
The whole presidium became a bunch of political touts who ranted and raved at the political terminus called State House in cheap defection skits that were broadcast on national television.
The President and his deputy reduced themselves to political touts at State House — mahwindi– whom we invariably heard as they hollered and shouted, exhorting innocent Zimbabweans to come and board their ramshackle political bus called Zanu PF on a doomed trip to hell.
State House became akin to a bustling taxi rank — a hive for pirate taxis popularly known as mushikashika where a whole President and his second-in-charge sonorously shouted during the well-choreographed defection sessions as they vended and marketed Zanu PF as the ultimate political transport to a doomed destination.
The dignity of State House and its reputation as a citadel for transacting national business beyond cheaply partisan matters is long gone, eaten away by a thespian Head of State given to cheap parody and dry political stunts. It appears the mission to bastardise the venerated Presidential palace has now been fully accomplished.
It is finished.
The ZBC, purportedly a national broadcaster with a mandate to give diverse and equal coverage to all political players consistent with section 61 of the Constitution, has now degenerated into “Emmerson and Auxillia TV”. For husband and wife are now the only main news items on the national broadcaster, sharing hours of prime time news coverage between them.
Indeed, the ZBC has become “Emmerson and Auxillia TV”, a station where only the two of them receive protracted in-depth coverage, each absolving the other. All pretence that the ZBC is a national broadcaster is long gone.
It is finished.
As we commemorated the crucifixion of the Son of Man last Friday, we remembered heinous acts the Mnangagwa regime has committed in the past few years since its gunnified entrance on the political dais in November 2017.
The callous murders of innocent citizens, the arbitrary arrests, the State-sanctioned abductions, the highly toxic and undeserved recalls, the closure of democratic space and the deliberate onslaught on the legitimate opposition in order to create a one-party-State are all well documented.
Jesus Christ may have been crucified on this day, but Mnangagwa too has equally crucified the last vestiges of whatever crucibles of democracy still remaining in Zimbabwe.
Mnangagwa has captured all institutions of the State including the sacred pillars of democracy such as the Judiciary and Parliament as well as all independent Chapter 12 institutions.
He has usurped the work of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission by creating a “special unit” in his own office, while the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission was at one time given Executive political orders not to hold by-elections, beginning the time when Constantino Chiwenga forced the “independent” electoral commission to backtrack and suspend by-elections whose dates they had earlier proclaimed.
Just as they nailed Jesus Christ on the cross on this day, Mnangagwa is equally nailing the last remnants of democracy and transparency on the cross of political expediency.
There is neither an iota nor a semblance of democracy still left in the entire body politic.
It is finished! Zvapera! Sekuphelile!
Conclusion
For me, the dictum: “It is finished”, will always remain a memorable Easter verse. It denotes accomplishment of a mission, the dusting up after the execution of one’s mandate.
And by the way, the sports are finished. I am done with this week’s column.
Indeed, it is finished.
