Back to Index

Where the sun don’t shine
Rejoice Ngwenya
March 25, 2013

There are two categories of Zimbabwean citizens whose professional and moral ‘vital organs’ are destined to be on permanent public display - elected politicians and civil servants. As such, they have to build up an incredible array of ‘antibodies’ to immunise themselves against legitimate contempt, cynical innuendos and, as Thought Leader adds: “… emotive bluster, ad hominem attacks, gross hyperbole, misdirection and baseless accusations...” It is thus a miscalculation of astronomical proportions for a national president, a prime minister, members of parliament, heads of parastatals, councillors, mayors, heads of police or army to attempt masquerading a ‘private life’ beyond the prying eye of citizens. How much more idiotic can one call themselves ‘humble public servant’ when they fight to prevent their deeds from being publicly critiqued?

A politician who spends several decades soliciting for votes yet systematically places impediments and obstacles for citizens who demand accountability is paralysed with self-delusion. There is an even more cancerous phenomena ancillary to this pervasive behaviour – cronies who create a laager of protectionism spiced with mechanical praise-singing, almost to levels of Napoleonic euphoria – around these deluded ‘public’ servants. This small clique of compliantly grateful, usually well-schooled diminished minds has been mandated to exude bellows of choking smoke around their master; plastering a veneer of saintly infallibility and indispensability to a point where the beneficiary of such feudal excesses assumes Christ-like sanctity.

Just like Adolph Hitler’s Gestapo – that privileged but misguided gang of praise-singers - withhold the most critical information from their ego-drunk master until the revolutionary bomb drops in his proverbial stately lounge. More often than not, these self-righteous starry-eyed dunderheads perish with their hallowed master. In rare instances, while their master is gloating and basking in superficial glory unaware of impending doom, the praise singers plot a rear door exit, and then watch from a safe distance as the punch-drunk master is squashed by the inevitable.

Seldom do heathen gods wake up from their metallic slumber - unless where the God of Abraham exercises his mercies – [the master, who by now is marinated with psychotic self-satisfaction] – to reveal a small window with which to expose his deceitful and cunning praise-singers. More often than not, the master pretends that stark reality which confronts him is in fact an illusion, wherefore he succumbs to self-delusion only to miss that golden opportunity for redemption.

Therefore we Zimbabweans - who have sacrificed so much to elude and resist the cruel and demeaning ZANU-PF dictatorship – must avoid walking straight into a political auditorium where only His Master’s Voice is the sole octave on the hymn sheet of post-1999 emancipation. When our ‘democratic leaders’ begin to walk, talk, dress, sleep and bath like our black-on-black oppressors, we should peer closely at the freedom dashboard for warning signals. Once our New Leaders start to demand the same sort of allegiance, honour, respect and attention as once wrung from defenceless citizens by those whose ‘revolutionary’ political mandate has long expired, we know something has gone amiss.

As the freedom sun floods the people of Zimbabwe who for so long have been subdued and bonded by the darkness of a ZANU-PF revolution that lost its bearings, let not our celebrations be marred by that rare club of educated, idiotic praise singers who may cast artificial shadows on those parts, the crevices of our so-called second generation liberators. Before we know it, we could slide back into the 1980s unsavoury scenario where leaders have sections of their public lives where the sun don’t shine.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP