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NewsDay

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Zimbabwe’s top 5 goofs of 2014

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Despite the effort and financial resources put towards public relations management, not a single year passes without some newsmakers and noisemakers providing embarrassing yet entertaining slip-ups that come in different forms, from bizarre, awkward suppositions to implausible excuses and unsubstantiated claims.

Despite the effort and financial resources put towards public relations management, not a single year passes without some newsmakers and noisemakers providing embarrassing yet entertaining slip-ups that come in different forms, from bizarre, awkward suppositions to implausible excuses and unsubstantiated claims.

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2014 provided generous set of bleeps and blunders that it took long to pick the best, or rather worst, from the huge pool. And we did not arrange them in any particular order.

Jah Prayzah’s reasons for copying song.
Hey!  "The beat was good and I was tempted to use it on one of my songs."
Hey! “The beat was good and I was tempted to use it on one of my songs.”

Is this is classic! In response to allegations that he silently ‘copied’ many elements from Ghanaian musician Emmanuel Samini’s song titled Samini and ‘pasted’ them onto his award-winning Mwanasikana, acclaimed musician Jah Prayzah told a local daily, “I was watching an African movie and I enjoyed the soundtrack. I did not know it was a released song (on the market). I just thought it was a track made for the movie. The beat was good and I was tempted to use it on one of my songs.” How daft.

Honestly, every song that comes out as a movie soundtrack, whether it makes it onto a musical album or not, remains copyrighted property published under the same rights as the movie it features in. It was rather disingenuous for such a celebrated role model of a musician to laugh off such a serious allegation and expect Zimbabweans to swallow it.

Word of advice to movie producers-stop using plug soundtracks in your productions, some might be tempted to ‘lift’ them and make award-winning songs.

(DANGER- HIGH VOLTAGE!) …not easy like “cooking sadza”

 

Sometime in the cold month of July, at the height of the ruthless winter power outages, the then Energy minister Dzikamai Mavhaire was in the frying pan for not improving electricity generation capacity. With extended load shedding that lasted for days, home electricity appliances, ports and plugs had ceased being danger zones and spiders could make their webs inside without even worrying about receiving some electrical shock. And from nowhere, minister Mavhaire seemed to have drawn enough (high-voltage) power to SHOCK! hundreds of MPs after telling parliament that improving the power generation in the country was not as easy as “cooking sadza”.

Yes, we know, former minister, that cooking sadza is quite easy, although the task becomes much harder when there is no electricity, but surely, nobody ever expected you to use such irrelevant, simplistic and cold examples to defend the ministry’s failure to ignite some heat and light into the homes of Zimbabweans.

not as easy as “cooking sadza” (in the dark)
not as easy as “cooking sadza” (in the dark)

 

Chihuri justification for falling

 

On May 29, Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri collapsed during a passout parade that President Robert Mugabe was presiding over. Although the fall caused panic and shock among many, the biggest thunderbolt was to come from the police boss’ response.

After apologising to Mugabe and the nation for “falling”, Chihuri did not stop there. He went on to tell a local daily that, “finally those people who think the President is not fit they must now ask me because we were together, we went through the same paces and there he was, up and about up until now when something caught up with me so they must take care.”

AUGUSTINE-CHIHURI-0

That was before he delivered the most interesting bit!

“The right shoe was mixed up with the left one. The right shoe is a bit small and it is an old shoe so my toes were burning because of the tightness of the shoe and there was no circulation (of blood) in that leg that caused me to be dizzy and then fell down.”

Grace Mugabe miniskirt attack on Mujuru

Miniskirt

During her tours to de-campaign Zanu PF officials aligned to the then Vice-president Joice Mujuru, First Lady Grace Mugabe made a BASKETFUL of ( Mazowe) CRUSHING public and political relations goofs; perhaps enough to outdo all the other ones in this article. But perhaps to afford space to others, let us pick one outstanding incident in which the fiery First lady claimed she had a video of the VP dressed in a mini-skirt talking to someone saying “rotten” things about her (Grace) being greedy. While it was okay for Grace to discredit Mujuru- as has become the nature of our politics – she ran away with the prize for cheap rhetoric by pulling the fashion card on the the then VP. Yes, the First lady is known for her expensive fashion taste, but it was just unfortunate that her statements came at a time when civic rights organisations were making noise about girls being harassed for wearing mini-skirts in the city centre.

Mugabe’s pasi neZanu PF gaffe

 

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After delivering a powerful speech at the Zanu PF elective congress in December, President Robert Mugabe was to end it by pulling off an exceptionally novel stunt. After explaining to the audience that his wife, the First Lady Grace had sent him a note complaining about the nonagenarian’s long speech, Mugabe’s masterstroke came; “Pasi neZanu PF(down with Zanu PF),” the oldster said before ending his speech.

Tapiwa Zivira, Online Reporter