08/10/2020
Brutal Reality 08-10-2020
Feature By Sotai Munhu
Sotai Munhu is the preferred norm de guerre and nom de plume for MDC Alliance Youth Assembly in South Africa’s (SAYA) spokesperson he writes here in his personal capacity.©
SA mediation — six of one and half dozen of the other.
During their infamous visit to Zimbabwe, the ANC delegation was well and truly led up the garden path , if ANC Secretary General — Ace Magashule's — pronouncements after the meeting were any guide.
When they emerged out of their meeting from the Shake Shake building along Rotten Row in Harare some weeks ago Magashule waxed lyrical and seemed to sing from the same threadbare hymn sheet with his Zanu PF counterparts.
After an o**y of fist waving and empty sloganeering with his counterparts he only stopped short of giving Zimbabwe's situation a clean bill of health calling the crises we face mere “challenges” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary some of which is spilling into South Africa itself.
Recently SA's Defence and Military veterans Minister Novisiwe Mapisa- Nqakula admitted as much, when she was taken to task over the junket to Zanu PF , she said “Issues of instability in Zimbabwe are negatively affecting national security of RSA”
Everyone with a healthy sense of shock must have been shocked stiff to hear Magashule agreeing with the Obert Mpofu that the crisis in Zimbabwe was — believe it or not — being caused by the social media. What a heap of dung!
After all these years of Zanu pf running rings around them , the ANC should know better than to be deceived by the former who are past masters of passing buck , subterfuge , deflecting blame and rank deception, is it any wonder why they are head-quartered along a road fittingly named Rotten Row?
Sending a whole high powered delegation to Zimbabwe — amidst reports of state sponsored abductions and systematic persecution of opposition members — was a telling admission that there was indeed a sn*******ng crisis.
Guess what , the Magashule delegation — better to call it the delegation of shame — contradicted their mission after being browbeaten , bullied and hoodwinked by Zanu PF.
Sports reporters seem to have a term they use in similar situations — “when it is easier to score than to miss” — the ANC delegation skied their effort and missed by a mile .
Zimbabweans who had forlornly hoped that the ANC is doing their damnedest to find a lasting solution to her neighbours problems could not help but think of Jeffrey Archer's world beating fiction titles — The Gospel according to Judas or Honour among Thieves — take your pick.
Any Zimbabwean would naturally feel awfully betrayed by the delegation of shame's conduct , a page clearly plucked out of “The Gospel according to Judas — the story of Judas' betrayal is as notorious as the bible itself.
Alas, it will behove Zimbabweans well and spare them heartache or an early grave even , if they were to stop holding their breaths whenever there are reports of mediation from ANC or their SADC brothers not least because these people are just birds of the same feather.
For years SADC has had ample opportunities to solve the problems we face but instead they elected to close ranks among themselves like a bunch of thieves — indeed there is honour among thieves.
While every tom, dick and Emerson wanted to see the back of Mugabe , a military coup is undesirable way for regime change.
Be that as it may SADC and AU saw nothing wrong with military coup which toppled Mugabe , for another the same SADC railroaded Zimbabwe to an election in 2013 without root and branch reforms.
In a region teeming tinpot despots like Mnangagwa and other former strongmen , where misrule and downright malfeasance are a staple , there is little to separate Zimbabwe and her regional counterparts.
Small wonder why ANC would come to Zimbabwe and fail to see the crises we face.
Head -in- the- sand and there -is -no - crisis has been ANC's choicest policies since President Mbeki's infamous statement years ago, this is despite available probative evidence that our country is wallowing in multiple if artificial crises spawned largely by misrule and maladministration.
In South Africa itself besides other scandals, the trip to Zanu PF where a coterie of non government functionaries conflated party with the state and hitched a hike in military plane is still raising a stink , the minister responsible has had her three months salary docked and the ANC has also been forced to defray half of the costs of the the trip.
In the same SADC region which boasts of the world's last absolute monarch — King Mswati III — of Swaziland now renamed eSwatini, employs equally shabby tactics to silence opposition in that mountainous kingdom.
The Mail and Guardian recently reported that in eSwatini opposition figures and journalists are routinely jailed on King Mswati III orders not least on charges emanating from colonial era legislation which were long struck down as unconstitutional by the courts of that kingdom.
The weekly paper detailed how the monarch routinely brings to bear colonial era legislation like The Sedition and Subversive Activities Act although the same legislation has long been quashed for being unconstitutional by the full bench of the high court.
These colonial era laws there are like a rusted but blooded knife which is unsheathed from its scabbard at every turn to cow citizens into perennial submission.
Once read somewhere that an Australian man was fined for mooning the British monarch — Queen Elizabeth II — and her husband, Prince Philip, during a royal visit to Australia.
While no one from SADC has said a peep about the human rights abuses obtaining in eSwatini but given half a chance many people will not be coy to moon the the polygamous Mswati for all his crimes.
In Mozambique a horrifying video circulated a few weeks ago of the security forces who are battling Islamic insurgents there, cold bloodedly shooting a naked woman at point blank. Who does that? Where is shame? What happened to conscience?
In strife torn Lesotho — a country also given to coups and assassinations, the immediate past Prime Minister Thomas Thabane was pressured to step down amid mounting pressure over a case in which he and his current wife are suspected of involvement in the 2017 murder of his estranged wife.
With this in mind it is clear that Mnangagwa's autocratic ways will not be frowned upon by his SADC or African acolytes because they cut from the same rotten cloth, he is in “good” company, which is equally complicit in our crisis.
With this manifest failure by SADC in general and in ANC in particular to appreciate the crisis we face as a people clearly we have a bigger crisis on our hands than initially thought. The first crisis that we face is that their sense of crisis is upside.
Hoping for SADC or ANC to solve Zimbabwe's problems is hoping too much , it is like expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas.
Pan'ono pan'ono urendo wamumuchenga ( bit by bit like a journey in the sand)
Zikomo kwambiri ( thank you so much)
