OK, it’s probably not the first time you have heard a version of this joke which goes: A small group of war veterans are huddled in a bar having a drink, reminiscing on their days in the army.
Echoes by Conway Tutani
Budges in this inebriated guy sitting at the next table: “I was also in the army.” One vet, thinking they have met a former comrade-in-arms, then asks him: “Which army?” Replies the drunken fellow: “The Salvation Army.”
On a serious note, I am reminded of this whenever Jabulani Sibanda makes noise – which he does frequently and ad nauseam – masquerading as a war veterans’ leader whereas he never fired even one shot during the liberation war.
Quizzed by NewsDay to disclose his age last year, Sibanda maintained that he would keep it secret. He said: “There is someone who called me and asked if indeed I was 11 years old when the war ended (in 1979). I was surprised that even without giving that person my birth certificate, the person wrote that as a fact.”
Sibanda, the straight talker that he is, couldn’t give a straight answer to a direct question. Do we have to change the year of independence to 1988 to accommodate his age? Sibanda has been at it again these past few days, making all sorts of accusations against the MDCs and the West as if they were factual.
Hollered Sibanda in front of his long-suffering, captive rural audiences: “As traditional leaders, you should make sure that you don’t have anyone with MDC-T cards in your areas. We should work hard to ensure that we restore the country from the MDC-T. They don’t believe in our own God, but in Satan. I am shocked there are pastors who are in MDC-T structures . . . Tsvangirai, Welshman Ncube (MDC leader), Dumiso Dabengwa (Zapu) and all the other parties are puppets of the West. They represent American interests and Americans are Satanists. Look at the back of a $1 bill, the 13 leaves that are there represent the 13 Americans who worshipped Satan.”
Notwithstanding that Sibanda and those behind him have loads and loads of this “satanic” currency.
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Obviously, Sibanda hasn’t read or has chosen to disregard the section in the draft constitution barring traditional leaders from open political partisanship.
The Constitutional Parliamentary Committee (Copac)-drafted constitution is about the future, about correcting what’s wrong in the nation. A complete break with the past would be destabilising, especially in view of the interests which have been entrenched over the past 32 years of one-party rule.
But Copac has worked so hard, so many good things have been achieved.
People are not blind. They know that Zanu PF is still in the driving seat with the MDCs largely as passengers now and then allowed on the steering, but for the briefest of moments and as long as they don’t take detours or deviate too much from the route as to threaten the status quo.
Those MDC ministers who have tried to assert their ministerial responsibilities have come short, brought down to earth by powerful, unelected bureaucrats such as Presidential spokesperson George Charamba and Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede, to name but two among many. Their style remains rooted in flexing their muscle.
Again, over the years, people have seen that those who govern them have become less and less sincere and more caught in conflicts of interest, like Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation chairman Godwills Masimirembwa’s justification and condonation of the military’s involvement in diamond mining, giving the distinct impression that they are in it together.
They have the State institutions firmly behind them and the money in their pockets.
Like powerful people do, they also have a tendency to blame any ills on the less powerful. They lie to the extent of alienating or detaching themselves from the pain and suffering of others. In the case of Sibanda, he acts like he is handing down some edict from on high.
He has been intrusive and invasive. We don’t hear policy-focused prescriptions from Sibanda, but attack after attack. This negative, destructive, distracting, scapegoating rhetoric is symptomatic of a sick society.
In the current climate of low growth, jobless recovery and high unemployment, people are looking for concrete policies, not rhetoric and “gifts” thrown their way now and then when elections are looming.
But Sibanda has been reworking the same theme over and over again. He is so busy spinning his old hits that he doesn’t bother to see or overlooks the real tragic drama going on: Deteriorating schools, stagnating wages, dramatic shifts in the economy, downsizing, chronic underemployment, job and capital flight – factors that reinforce poverty.
Not this tired, shallow West bashing. So the last person you want to see and hear is Sibanda, who has been repeating himself over and over again to the great annoyance of many people.
Sibanda and those behind him are beginning to sound distinctly like a broken record.
