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Secrets of a dying old man, moral and political bankruptcy and choices we have for Zimbabwe
Mathula Lusinga
April 15, 2013

View this article on the Harare Sunset website

Some Zimbabwean politicians will never stop taking Zimbabweans for a ride. They publicly declare their allegiance to secrecy, corruption, lies and political bankruptcy. For example, there are too many lies about the president’s health, as details now emerge from his senior aides that the real reason for his much publicised Singapore trip was that he collapsed while taking a stroll in his garden. We hear that after collapsing, Vice President Mujuru was called to the scene where Mugabe was revived by his doctors and then secretly flown to Singapore for further treatment. Mujuru was present again at the airport welcoming Mugabe back from Singapore weeks later, something that raises suspicion that power could be handed over to her when Mugabe goes. While senior Zanu PF officials at the time believed it was the end for Mugabe, the information about his collapse is heavily guarded within their inner circle in order to prevent it from escalating succession struggles if made public. This is bad for the country as people are kept in the dark about whether the country has a healthy leader who would spend time dealing with the country’s challenges rather than a dying jet setting Mugabe. In Malawi the failure to improve hospitals cost its president’s life while Mugabe gets around the failure of his government to make our health system better by wasting a lot of government money seeking treatment abroad.

Political bankruptcy and negative attitudes towards women

Last Sunday we observed Mother’s Day by highlighting the growing concerns over negative attitudes towards women held by some Zimbabwean politicians. Joyce Mujuru recently declared that most marriages fail because married women fight other women who are reportedly seeing their husbands. Following her lead, we hear MDC-T MP Thabitha Khumalo has joined the chorus by suggesting that wives must strike an understanding with their husband’s mistresses to avoid transferring sexually-transmitted diseases. Another idiotic and potentially dangerous comment allegedly came from MDC-T Senator Morgan Femai who proposed that government consider a law that will ban women from bathing regularly. According to the Senator, dirty, chubby women are less attractive to men and therefore there will be less HIV/AIDS transmission. Addressing a parliamentary workshop on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS he said “women have got more moisture in their organs compared to men, so there is need to research how to deal with that moisture because it is conducive for bacteria breeding and that there should be a way to suck out that moisture” – what a lot of crap from a public representative! It goes to show that our problems are far from over and I think we must treat these statements very seriously because they can lead to terrible abuses of women in our society. Sadly, this is the calibre of politicians that lead us. It will be left to voters in the next elections to decide whether we allow such idiocy to define our identity as a nation.

Dominated by selfish individuals

I have heard people saying the problem is that our politics is becoming dominated by selfish characters who show little concern for the people they represent. They say that the much of the political and civil space is occupied by greedy people who think only themselves deserve to lead and no one should question their integrity. We see this behaviour in the Military leadership and the so called hardliners in the Zanu PF party who have continuously threatened people saying if they vote against Zanu PF, there will be war. To me these are empty threats from political bankrupt minorities and I believe they are fighting a lost war. For years, they have been fighting to remove Jacob Zuma as the SADC mediator in Zimbabwe and they failed. They have been threatening to pull out of the GPA but they are still here with us. They threaten elections this year and reality is that this will not happen. So it is up to us as ordinary people to stand our ground, first by voting the crazy characters out of our political space and replacing them with sensible leaders. If this fails to work, we must then make a choice whether going through the cold winter without electricity (as we are told will be the case this year) is the life we choose or we revolt by any means possible to correct the imbalances of our society.

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