MUCKRAKER saw it coming — as always. This week there was credible talk of something finally being in the process of being done to bring the Bulawayo bombing incident of 2018 to finality or sort of.
It is no accident of coincidence that this outstanding case is being remembered just around the time when term extension efforts are not going smoothly because some people have elected to appoint themselves stumbling blocks.
It is for a moment like this that the bombing case and others were made to appear forgotten, so that they can come in handy to loosen sticky situations without appearing too obviously vindictive.
Surely, how can people want to refuse their Owner his God-given right to see “his projects” to their logical conclusion, in the process disrobing him of the credit that is due to him?
Remember these projects are personal, not national, which also makes everything personal, hence the personal fight. It is not about the party, not about the country, but about the person — our Owner.
Even the country is a very personal project, hence the Owner. He wants to finish it too! Finish, as in completely finishing it. As in leaving nothing!
No milk from hen
Last week, the Minister with no Finance, Cde Mthuli Ncube, added to the misery of Zimbabweans when he presented a budget that only serves to embarrass those that had, until now, doubted that the man is a sadist.
- All he wants is to finish ‘his project’
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This is a man — a failed banker, remember? — who, upon his appointment to the post in October 2018, threatened to turnaround the economic fortunes of the country in no time; challenging his detractors to give him just six months to end their misery.
Some six years later, the country is worse off — he is now even failing to pay civil servants on time yet, to him, it has become very normal. This has prompted some to question the brother’s qualifications as a professor.
One thing that should never escape the general populace is the reality that the reeling party is a cult in which no one is free to make sound and commonsensical decisions. Cults don’t operate like that.
Cults survive on making people suffer — the more they suffer the easier it is to control them. Once one is in, it is no longer about the individual, but the whole collective.
The more decisions that make people groan, the better. The wackier the decisions, the even better. Mthuli Ncube fully knows that all his decisions, including the ZiG project, will not work, but that makes him a star player in the cult, because of his immense contribution to the overall goal, which is to inflict untold suffering on the people.
He is a slave of the party, so expecting something good to come from him is as foolhardy as expecting milk from a hen.
No matter his qualifications, he can’t deliver on his original threats for as long as he belongs to this reeling party. He knows it, but sadly he simply can’t admit it and walk away. It is not the done thing in cults. Besides, that devilry in people that drive them to join cults in the first place also serves to keep them in there.
What makes Mthuli Ncube and John Mushayavanhu, his Reserve Bank governor different from Bernard Chidzero (and Kombo Moyana) of the 1980s is that the latter were free from party orders as they reported directly to the Western powers that were key in providing the budgetary support that the country needed to survive.
Mind games
The reeling party knows very well that it has since squandered all the goodwill that it ever had, so it is on an active drive to manufacture a little bit of it, for the good of its conscience.
Yes, it also has a bit of conscience, which explains why it would want to be seen as democratic even when there is nothing democratic about it. Even thieves operate in the dark because something inside tells them of the importance of being seen to be honest and dignified members of the community during daytime.
One sure way of manufacturing this goodwill is using its fake opposition in local authorities to make a show by razing down illegally built houses so that the party may have an opportunity to protest against the demolitions and hence be seen to love the people.
In Harare, the rented and survivalist mayor Cde Jacob Mafume, is too pleased to do his handlers’ bidding. He says there are more than 100 000 houses that have been built illegally in the capital. This could actually be a gross under-estimation as the figure could be three times that much because for the past two decades-plus, the party has been parcelling out residential stands on farms on the outskirts of the city, and continues to do so.
Just as the rainy season is starting, Cde Mafume makes a show of remembering that his council has several dozens of court orders to demolish hundreds of illegal structures in the capital. His council, which is always short of earthmoving equipment and fuel to fix the collapsing infrastructure, suddenly has all the resources it needs to carry out the demolitions. And as for the party, Cde Daniel Garwe literally leaps in front of the bull-dozers to stop the demolitions “in the name of the people”. Mind games!
Muck and others who have been Zimbos long enough know that there is certainly no way an opposition-controlled local authority can raze down thousands of houses built on stands allocated by the party!
Meanwhile, the same party is always dangling title deeds to the occupants. The occupants live in perpetual fear, hence the party can be sure how they will vote in the next several elections to come.
88 Manica Road
The owners of these structures are forever beholden to the party. Whenever there is a threat — real or putative — they are quick to rush to the reeling party for protection.
It is remindful to Muck of the “Manica Road justice” of the early 1980s. Shortly after independence in 1980, anyone who wanted quick justice against their enemies would simply walk into 88 Manica Road, Salisbury, the then headquarters of the winning party where there was a desk ready to deliver “justice to the people” — be it a son-in-law who was taking too long to settle the bride price, an employer who was paying “peanuts”, or family member who was suspected to be into witchcraft.
The party was ever ready to handle those types of grievances and in the process supremely endearing itself to the people. It’s a tried and tested strategy that has worked before and will be in increasing use, especially now as the party has less and less to offer.
Criminal poster boy
Still on the party’s strategy to manufacture popularity, it continues to use its poster child, convicted criminal Cde Wicknell Chivayo, to buy everyone and anyone who might be having anything like a following of their own. The latest beneficiaries of the car giveaways being musicians Mechanic Manyeruke, Olivia Charamba and Leonard Zhakata.
Soccer personalities Moses Chunga and Charles Mabika also qualified for the loot. Everyone knows the real source of the money and the purpose of those donations — to ensure that the number of people who have no reason to like the party may be kept in check at all costs.
