Warts of democracy can be an eyesore

Cynics often say politics is like a sewage as it allows stinking and filthy scum to rise to the top.

In a twisted way, it's pretty much like milk, which, as it matures, allows cream to rise.

Well, how else can one describe our current breed of Members of Parliament (MPs)?But in this part of the Savanna, it seems that we invariably have more scum than we have milk.

At the beginning of this month, MPs in the House of Commons in the UK — more than 12 000 kilometres from Harare — unanimously endorsed a motion by the opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to declare a formal climate and environment emergency.

You see, our cousins in the cold isles of "Harare North" believe that rising incidences of weather-related calamities call for urgent measures to cut back on harmful emissions that climatologists blame for freak weather patterns.

But forget the UK, nowhere are the grievous and painful effects of climate change felt more keenly than in Zimbabwe; most particularly, in Manicaland, where the monstrous Cyclone Idai recently killed more than 300 people and wrecked over 200 000 lives.

Dreadlocked clown

Naturally, one would expect a kinsmen from the scarred backyard of Manicaland to have been so moved by the recent tragedy that he would have wanted to push a motion or two for legislative changes to either prevent such a catastrophe from happening, or, when it happens, to minimise the loss of life.

Bishop Lazi would imagine that there is urgent need to delimit areas fit for human settlements, including enactment and or enforcement of building standards compatible with beastly storms attendant to cyclones and storms, which are common in that part of our teapot-shaped republic.

But not for Mutasa Central MP Trevor Saruwaka.

The dude is caught up in a different world of his own.

On Wednesday last week, the dreadlocked MDC-Alliance legislator could not resist the temptation to milk the limelight for an opportunity to pointlessly gloat about the recent by-election held in his constituency.

Just when his peers had barely warmed their seats, the 44-year-old jester had one burning question.

"I rise on a point of privilege to say you might have been aware that on Saturday 11th May 2019, there was a by-election in Mutasa Central, Ward 10. Preceding that by-election, there was a lot of coverage on ZBC-TV, but on Sunday, up to today, I have been trying to look in the public media, the results have not been publicised," he queried?

Imajeni, a grown-ass man being seen off to work by his loving family just to ask that silly question.

Nonsense!

But this prompted the Bishop to do some digging. Indeed the Bible often gives us some handy clues.

James 3:11-12 fittingly questions: "Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water."

I guess, accordingly, one cannot expect to get wisdom from a junkie.

You see, dear reader, before Saruwaka bought his meal ticket through becoming an MP, he used to be a forester.

Yes, someone who wanders around forests and ensures that everything therein is in perfect order.

Bishop Lazi wonders what it is that he could have come across in those forests — home to many herbs — that made him "irie".

But what is certain is that whatever he saw, smocked or experienced in those forests changed his life.

He now almost always sports some dreadlocks and professes to be a Rastafarian.

Curiously, he still claims that one of his major hobbies include "managing forests".

One hopes that by "managing forests" the honourable comrade doesn't mean growing anything illegal or smocking hallucinogens.

Hallucinogens are deemed illegal because they perilously and fatally melt fantasy into reality, often with catastrophic consequences.

One fine afternoon on October 26 2016, a blissful Saruwaka waltzed into the august House in a multi-coloured jacket that prompted the ire of Parliament's fashion police.

Although the legislator might have thought that he looked dapper, he definitely looked more like a chandelier in that outlandishly dazzling outfit.

Our fine law enforcement agents had to be called in to remove the eyesore.

Saruwaka, through his lawyers, later claimed that there was nothing untoward about his jacket as it was fashioned out of the national flag.

In a letter dated November 1 2016, Kadzere, Hungwe and Mandevere Legal Practitioners — his lawyers — wrote to Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda pleading their client's case.

"It is needless to say that our client sports a dreadlock hairstyle and he is of the Rastafarian religion.

The jacket allegedly bearing the national flag colours is also synonymous with the Rastafarian religion and beliefs," read the letter.

But two days later, this did not stop Adv Mudenda from giving the intransigent legislator the boot after he turned up with his abominable suit, again, at Parliament's pre-Budget seminar in Bulawayo.

The Saruwaka's who populate our Parliament today — for they are many — are the painful warts of this incomprehensive imported creature we call democracy.

It is, like I said before, a sewage which ensures that it is only the scummiest of the scum that remains buoyant.

Surely, is this the best comrade that the people of Mutare Central and the MDC-Alliance can bring forward to debate the onerous questions of the day, especially when so much work has to be done to extricate our kinsman from the curse of grinding poverty.

As a responsible man of the cloth, Bishop Lazi can only caution: with Parliament being a theatre for such monkey business that we have been seeing lately, it might clearly take a while for the country to get its gorilla-sized monkey off its back.

Honourable Saruwaka should know that the people of Zimbabwe deserve better.

The Bishop will also advise the legislator to read Proverbs 13:20: "Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm."

Bishop out!