There is a real contest in praise singing in Zimbabwe today. Some leaders have variously been described as Jesus’ brother or the 2nd Jesus, and a Messiah.
Not even Julius Caesar, or the Egyptian Pharaohs were ever so extravagantly worshipped. History is fraught with leaders whom sycophants thought would live forever, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Chairman Mao, Kim Il Sung, Mobutu Sese Seko, to name but a few.
Long after his death, Kim Il Sung remained president of his country as sycophants refused to accept that he had died. Everyone else was acting on behalf of the “resting” Kim Il Sung. Such is the extent to which sycophants can go.
We have to understand the psyche and anatomy of a sycophant: There are two types of sycophants: (1) the ones who need commercial and financial gain and (2) the ones who are already financially heeled but need political accommodation.
A sycophant is an animal in its own class and genus. It’s a parasitic animal which attaches itself to a host, like a creeper.
Without the host, it would have survival challenges, and to justify its keep, it has to “lick”, that is, make outrageous pronouncements about its host, time and time again, often to the total embarrassment of the host because of excess dosages. That’s not to say that when the host “dies”, and I use the word die figuratively, to denote when the host is demised and ceases to provide succour, for one reason or another, the sycophant is adept at attaching itself to yet another host.
They are like the blackjack, attaching to a passing animal.
It’s not unusual for sycophants to make a 360% turn and start supporting exactly the person they would have been denigrating previously. It’s not about principle, it’s about power shifts. They do not follow the person, they follow the power.
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There used to be a sycophant of Asian extraction during the Abel Muzorewa era, who was so good at his game, but when Muzorewa came tumbling, in 1980, it wasn’t long before that same sycophant found his accommodation in Zanu PF.
There is another young career sycophant who has been kicked out of just about every party he has joined, from ZUM, to MDC, to MDC-M and is now back in Zanu PF and is executing the profession of sycophancy like an Old Testament patriarch and has resultantly earned himself some good rewards. When sycophants are on the feeding trough, they lose themselves.
They worship the idol. They pray to the heavens above through their leader. “Our father; who art in Zimbabwe; Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom stay . . . ”! They kneel; they grovel; they crawl on their bellies. We have to bear with them . . . they are a fact of life.
How else could they earn their master’s attention and their keep, if they didn‘t follow their “profession” religiously? It’s a disease of the mind!
For an adult to stand up and state that certain leaders are immortal boggles the mind. How does anyone think these leaders feel about such excesses?
A friend of mine once told me that Edison Zvobgo opined that the Zanu PF central committee was constitutionally the more powerful organ and that the politburo was a mere secretariat of the same. This was following the latter having made some decision which was beyond its calling, constitutionally.
A smart-alec of a journalist, I was told, in an apparent bid to incite a fight between President Robert Mugabe and Zvobgo, accosted the former at the agricultural show at the Showgrounds and put forward what the latter had said, to which President Mugabe beckoned Zvobgo to come and answer the question and Zvobgo repeated his answer that the politburo had no power and was a mere secretariat of the central committee.
Now, just imagine if the same had been asked of a sycophant?
We have all seen some government ministers refuse to acknowledge or recognise the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in a bid to appear “superpatriotic and revolutionary” to their party.
Some have openly stated that the Prime Minister has no power because he did not appoint them. Research says there once lived a man in the Jomo Kenyatta era, whose name was James Mungai, a mere Assistant Commissioner of Police who headed the dreaded Ngoroko unit, then, who, on at least two occasions slapped Daniel arap Moi, the then Vice- President, in the face, in front of Kenyatta, at State House, in Nakuru, Kenya, in his bouts of sycophancy, hoping to please Kenyatta.
As fate would have it, Moi lived to become the President of Kenya, with the passing on of Kenyatta on August 22 1978. Naturally, like Mohammed’s flight from Mecca to Medina or Moses’ from Egypt to Midian , James Mungai fled into exile, until President Moi, in his magnanimity, forgave him.
Beware, this runaway sycophancy! Some of our leaders’ barbed comments are aimed at scuttling the inclusive government.
Beware, this witless runaway sycophancy! Nationhood can easily be poisoned by witless rancour and narrow self-interest.
