“The first rule of politics is: Know how to count.”
CONWAY TUTANI ECHOES
This was memorably said by former United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was in office from 1963 to 1969. Because if you don’t know how to count, you might as well be speaking to yourself.
This week there was a lead story in a supposedly State-run newspaper which has, in actuality, been reduced to a Zanu PF mouthpiece.
The story had the headline: Mujuru, MDC-T in 2008 ploy. The import of the story was that Mujuru and her late husband, Retired General Solomon Mujuru, had since 2007 been working with the MDC-T to ensure the removal — constitutional and legal, by the way — of President Robert Mugabe.
It read like a planted story. The first tell-tale of this was that it was attributed to “Herald Reporters”. How many? Ordinarily if three or even more reporters are involved in the writing of a story, their names are given, but not in this case. Somebody is probably hiding behind the anonymity of “Herald Reporters” to advance their agenda of lies and distortions.
It’s very easy and convenient to fiercely and libellously attack someone anonymously. As is often the case with such cowardly and scurrilous hatchet jobs, it was totally baseless and irresponsible.
This is not aimed specifically at the editors of the paper, but at the unprofessional fingers who have no time for ethics, but are now too often budging into newsrooms and fictionalising events.
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But Zimbabweans, despite being fed a staple diet of lies and distortions, have remained a discerning lot. With the sensational claim by one of the State intelligence officers accused of attempting to bomb the Gushungo Dairy plant (previously thought to be owned by the Mugabes) in January alleging that a senior army officer personally directed him to carry out the operation and was constantly in touch with him over the phone, Zimbabweans will be eagerly waiting to see how the case pans out — or peters out. Have I digressed? Not a bit.
And, politically speaking, what’s fundamentally wrong and strange with former Vice-President Joice Mujuru’s newly-launched Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) party having a pre-election pact with main opposition leader MDC-T Morgan Tsvangirai, especially in view of her most shabby treatment by Zanu PF? Didn’t Kenyan politician William Ruto turn the tables against Raila Odinga by joining hands with Uhuru Kenyatta to form the Jubilee Alliance, resulting in Ruto being appointed Deputy President after Kenyatta won the 2013 elections and became President?
One, there are no permanent friends, as war veterans — after cheering loudly the expulsion of Mujuru — are quickly and painfully discovering after being set on by First Lady Grace Mugabe, with upstarts like Zanu PF deputy youth leader Kudzi Chipanga, in her corner, mocking them as now old, sickly and long overdue to be consigned to the political junkyard.
Two, there are no permanent enemies — as seen in the overtures between ZimPF and MDC-T. People work out alliances as and when because all organisations have fissiparous tendencies.
With time, organisations tend to undergo division into separate parts or groups. And, also with time, they can regroup and resume to work as one. Yes, while we didn’t choose to be born Zimbabwean, there is no law which says one has to be a lifelong member of a certain political party. One can move in and out at one’s pleasure.
Three, who does not know that Mugabe’s best days are behind him? Doesn’t the current turmoil rocking a Mujuru-less Zanu PF point to that? Even in Zanu PF, there is now open jockeying for power, a tacit acknowledgement that the fallible and mortal Mugabe can only go so far. It certainly runs deeper than Mujuru.
As one can see, Mugabe has well and truly lost the dressing room, to use a football metaphor.
If a football coach loses the dressing room, the players no longer respect him or follow his instructions. Paranoia sets in. Splits emerge and cliques develop. There is a lot of whispering and backstabbing — it’s not a healthy environment.
In Mugabe’s case, he is fast losing authority as can be seen in the party wrangles breaking out right before his eyes with no end in sight. He looks decidedly powerless.
His influence has been eroded. Mugabe just has to admit that the world around him is beginning to crumble.
This did not happen overnight, but it was building to that as he became more and more autocratic, erratic and even paranoid after realising the MDC was a strong and credible alternative following its successful drive for a “No” vote in the 2000 constitutional referendum despite his government’s campaign for a “Yes” vote using the State media in a propaganda blitz.
Soon after that, Mugabe unleashed the so-called fast-track land reform programme, but many ministers cringed at this.
Mugabe then pointedly said he was now on his own because the ministers were not “amadoda sibili” (did not have the spine) to go along with him in what was, plainly speaking, ethnic cleansing of white farmers.
There is a thin line between courage and pig-headed self-destruction — and his chief lieutenants like Mujuru were beginning to see that streak in Mugabe. Is it any wonder then that they turned elsewhere for sobriety?
Now Mugabe is seeing enemies everywhere, including within his own party Because of that suicidal vanity, we have the unique, but unenviable distinction of being the only country in the region without its own currency despite Mugabe masquerading as the ultimate champion of sovereignty, giving embarrassingly unsolicited advice to fellow Sadc leaders on how to run their economies when advice should be flowing the opposite direction.
For instance, Botswana’s Ian Khama Seretse Khama could tell Mugabe how diamond revenue is maximised for the benefit of the nation, not looted to the tune of $15 billion.
The newspaper roped in the usual suspects as analysts and they did not disappoint in their narrowness and bias. As a result, readers, were particularly scathing with Midlands State University (MSU) media lecturer Professor Nhamo Mhiripiri, who said Mujuru wooing the MDC-T and the West would expose Zimbabwe to the whims of Western nations. One response went like this: “I feel very sorry for MSU students being taught by this ‘political analyst’ called Dr Mhiripiri
. . . (he) represent(s) the very reason why the President and his inner circle do not send their children to local universities!” Then another one: “. . . we talk about Mujuru as having US backing yet our own country does not have its own currency and we are using the currency of the so-called West . . . ”
Yes, there is nothing learned or scholarly about it if you do not look at issues from all angles. The Mhiripiris regurgitate instead of analysing. Instead of being scientific, they are ritualistic. Can you really expect anything of value from such embedded academics?
That said, those behind the story headlined Mujuru, MDC-T in 2018 ploy, would by now have realised that their disparaging claims about the Mujurus and MDC-T fell flat among the newspaper’s own website readers. Over 85% of the responses showed they did not in the least believe the version of events in the story, the inferences made and the conclusions drawn. The narrative of it all did not resonate with the people.
Those faceless powerful people planting stories in the media ought to learn of the first rule of politics: Know how to count. Because if they took time to count the responses to their fabrications and distortions, they would desist from their propaganda — because it is a complete waste of time as their losses mount.
