BY Cyprian M Ndawana DEAR President Emmerson Mnangagwa,
Your Excellency, methinks it is astonishing that you appear to be the only stranger who is not impacted by the allegations of sexual impropriety made by an Australia-based Susan Mutami.
It is akin to being criminally defiant that you are largely silent over her accusations of violations when she was a minor, needful of parental care, guidance and protection. It is particularly thunder striking that you seem oblivious of your moral obligation to respond.
Your Excellency, since time immemorial, accountability has been an integral part for Presidential devoir. Society looks upon them as role models for strict observance of high moral code. It ought to dawn on you that it is not only your reputation that is on the line, but that of the nation also.
It amounts to practicing politics without principle that you are quiet. Methinks, if the accusations had made before the military orchestrated power change, they could have dented your succession prospects of the deposed former President Robert Mugabe.
Your Excellency, as I see it, it is creditable to President Cyril Ramaphosa duly discharged the moral duty to respond to accusations of financial impropriety against him. His fellow cadres did not harp brazen-faced assertions in a desperate bid to exonerate him as did a Zanu PF bigwig recently.
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It is imperative to be mindful of the far-reaching consequences of inappropriate sexuality, more so on ones well below the legal age of consent. Besides her accusations of trespassing her body against you, she also made charges against the First Lady.
Save for accusing the opposition for stimulating the making of the accusations, you have been altogether quiet about the accusations. It does not suffice to ridicule her, casting aspersions on her character. Rather, probity warrants candid responses to her accusations.
Pity, none of the indigenous church leaders who crowd around you is of stern and upright morality as Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They are besmirched. At least one of them could have hit the ground running to awoken you to the seriousness of the alleged violations of child rape committed during your ministerial tenure.
Your Excellency, if there were bona fide men with a calling, who walk not by sight, but by faith, they would have felt duty-bound, singularly or collectively, to implore you to resign. Given that your party has never had a constitutional succession, your resignation would primarily be seasonable.
It would earn you honour and reverence, more so that your party congress is on the countdown. These allegations are a distinct call on you to bite the bullet and resign. It is crucial to preserve the dignity of the Presidency.
Your Excellency, it is a damnable quest to hold on to the High Office on the backdrop of such smeary allegations. It is my fervent conviction that allegations of sexual impropriety by their nature, are downright amoral. They are a pointer to gross abrogation of restraint and duty to care. It is honourable to resign from public office on the onset of the allegations.
Your Excellency, as humans journey through life, they are oftentimes confronted by situations that demand nothing short of hard decisions. Such situations demand answers that really answer. Methinks for you, these allegations compel you to cross the Rubicon.
Granted, a Vice-President recently resigned due to unrestrained conduct with women. Also, President Canaan Banana is conspicuous by his absence at the National Heroes Acre due to pervasive sexuality. Methinks their ultimate fate set precedence for sexual depravity.
Your Excellency, we all watched attentively as President Bill Clinton battled for political survival. He faced searching questions over his involvement with a female intern. Although he admitted to inappropriate behaviour, Clinton survived by a whisker, but tarnished his presidential stature.
He lost significant public trust. It suffices to underscore that besides upholding and defending the Constitution, Presidents are inherently expected to embody social values and norms. They ought to be conscious, guided by a moral sense of honour and duty.
Your Excellency, there is more to the sobriety of citizenry than the current spiking economic meltdown. Aptly, the country is under a dumpy blanket of hopelessness, as citizenry wonder not only about what tomorrow may bring, but, if at all the very morrow will ever come.
There is an unmistakable mournfulness which, cannot be singularly attributed to the all, but collapsed economy. With the cost of living having galloped far beyond the reach of the populace, the generality of people have since tightened their belts to the very last hole.
Probably, the fourth anniversary of the fatal gunning down of citizenry in Harare could be a contributory factor. Yet, remembrance of the military onslaught, heartless as it was, the severity of State sanctioned brutality on civilians is indeed only, but of subsidiary effects.
Ever since allegations of your impropriety towards the then minor went public, citizenry was simultaneously gripped by malaise. Her account of the predatory determination with which you are said to have subdued her sounds like a reading from the satanic verses.
Your Excellency, her first-person narratives of oftentimes repeated intimate indulgencies she alleges against you are heartrending, at the very least. They give rise to reasons for the disquietude over the probabilities of having national affairs presided over by a sexual predator.
Essentially, any conscious person is bound to be terrified by the thought of having a sexual pervert as President. Even the lightsome, who are ordinally of the take it ease nature, would also be roused. Duly, the intensity with which the allegations were made is pointed.
Your Excellency, ever since she broke her silence, citizenry has been going about their daily quest of livelihoods heavy laden with anxiety and questions that really question. These accusations have the force to hurl one from palace to prison as happened to Joseph.
Your Excellency, truly, you are perched on the horn of dilemma. Given that the accusations were reported at a police station in foreign land, it means that the case has international significance. It is my humble submission that you are indeed as good as hang up to dry.
With the allegations coming on the backdrop of pending legal challenge against your assumption of the reins of Zanu PF, the fog is thickening fast, with fury around you. Former United States President Richard Nixon was once in a likewise quandary.
He was staring impeachment straight in the face. Yet, his insistence on the claim that there was no whitewash in the Whitehouse wore thin amid scrutiny. He ultimately resigned, utterly disgraced.
Nixon most probably, echoes of the rueful words of Job: “What I dreaded has come upon me,” (Job 3:25) are audible in your innermost self.
Your Excellency, as I see it, rarely does the freak of nature show man that the supreme power belongs to God and not to mere mortals.
- Cyprian Muketiwa Ndawana is a public speaking coach, motivational speaker, speechwriter and newspaper columnist.