OUR owner has been enjoying the sights in the vast Eastern nation of China. He has been there since last week ahead of the 2024 China-Africa Cooperation Summit (Focac) currently underway in the capital, Beijing.
Some pesky Zimbabweans, staying away from his misrule and enjoying the comforts of his hosts, likely on cue, then asked him about the push by apparatchiks in his Zany party for him to extend his ownership of the country by another term which, as it stands, is unconstitutional. Our owner dutifully insisted that he would hand over the ownership of this country and allow others a chance to eat.
The audience was shocked to learn that the owner was a constitutionalist and that “he held dear the constitution”. After all, he told his stunned audience, he had written the document himself!
His remarks, we were told, should put paid growing speculation that he intends to amend the sacred constitution to either extend his ability to eat without question to 2030 or simply add another five years to his lease agreement.
To make sure there was no chance of his hosts and other foreign agents to misunderstand what he was saying, he told his audience in Shona: “If there are people you are gossiping with saying the chief wants to extend his term, forget it, I don’t want. The people of Zimbabwe gave me a lot to plough and when I’m finished others will come in.
“So, this question of having a third term does not arise, especially under my watch, no. I am in my second term and I already know the date I am stepping down as president. In 2028, I’m retiring to my home and others will come in. So, if there are people entertaining such thoughts tell them to perish the idea, that’s not in my plans.”
Forked tongue
Wonderful, the less informed would say. Not Muck, who has seen and heard enough to know that our owner is being conservative with the truth, you know, speaking with a forked tongue.
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If he was serious about not pursuing a third term, why are journalists in the public media being forced to parrot the alleged endorsements by Zany party youths at the provincial level clamouring for our owner to extend his lease beyond 2028?
Muck understands from impeccable sources that several editors were hauled on hot coals for taking our owner’s words at face value that he will not seek to extend his rulership.
Yes, he has been consistent in rejecting the idea of extending his term, but the journalists are being told that they have to sing loudest that provinces are demanding that our owner be allowed to take us to the Utopia he promised in 2030. Failure to shout loud enough has disastrous consequences as those who have taken the long lonely walk from Munhumutapa offices to the Herald House will testify.
Also, several party leaders have paid the price for not chanting the slogan to keep our owner in power.
Muck thinks the man ought to just do us a favour and stop pretending. It is not helping him and, in fact, shows him to be as shifty as a chameleon.
Poorly choreographed
Muck asks, again: Why are we going through this poorly choreographed charade that is clearly being driven by our owner himself to camouflage his attempt at a constitutional coup?
The 2030 agenda requires that our owner clear several hurdles, including potentially two referendums.
Clearly, he does not want to have to go this way, as it would show that his claim to be “a constitutionalist” would show him to be nothing but another African dictator unwilling to leave the gravy train while he still has breath in his body.
Our owner can save us a lot of grief by just being open up about his ambitions — full stop.
Muck agrees with Dhonzamusorro007 that Zimbabwe’s political opposition parties are in willful incapacitation and finds that the idea of their being able to mobilise to stop the 2030 agenda laughable. Are we being serious that Sengezo Tshabangu, Dougie Mwonzora, Welshman Ncube, Charlton Hwende and their ilk have some kind of backbone to oppose the desires of our owner? Please.
This lot wants to enjoy their insidiously earned perks while they last because, if it does happen that our owner accepts to leave the State House in 2028, they know their time would be up.
Zimbabweans have long memories about the quislings that betrayed their struggle for a decent living for trinkets.
AU chairmanship
As Muck has said before, the 2030 agenda wants to top his reign by taking the chairmanship of the African Union which comes into play that year.
The AU chairmanship rotates among the five regional groups on the continent. The current chairperson is Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani. Mauritania is in North Africa. The chairmanship moves to Southern Africa next year; Angola and Botswana are vying for it.
When the Sadc region gets another shot in 2030, our owner wants to chair the AU. It is very important to him, and would, in his eyes, grant him legitimacy to retire as a “statesman”, a distinction denied him by the controversial electoral victories in 2018 and 2023.
Game of Thrones
His biggest hurdle to the 2030 dream is not the alleged opposition, or even the precious constitution, but the elements in the Zany party. The success of the dream would depend on outwitting the generari in the Zany version of Game of Thrones.
The ice cream poisoning scare of August 2017 in the lead-up to the army chiefs kicking out longtime owner, the late Robert Mugabe, from office was sufficient warning. The bomb explosion during campaigning for the 2018 elections simply reinforced the belief that politics is not for the fainthearted, and that one plays to win, or they find themselves being interred in the plot at Warren Hills where the nation’s affluent are given a hero’s burial and swiftly forgotten.
Muck opines that the Zany party’s national conference this year could make for riveting theatre. Could we see those currently shouting the “ED2030” declaring the conference to become an extraordinary congress and move that their man pushes on till 2030? That decision will bind the party to the resolution, and make the 2028 congress redundant.
This is a high-stakes game, and Muck thinks should that happen, the move would force the other parties to go for broke and this will not end well.
What happens when you weld on the lid on a boiling pot and exert unrelenting heat underneath?
Signs so far point to the fact that this is not going to be pretty. Afterall, nobody saw 2017 coming.
