Chamisa note: ears of a hippo

A HIPPO is a titanic water animal that lives in seas and lakes while it predominantly feeds and patrols on the land. Besides the hippo's legendary short-temper and propensity to violence against humans and other animals, the beast boasts of many novel habits that have long arrested the attention of students of animal behaviours and captured the imagination of wild life observers.

Among the many fascinating antics of the water monster is its tendency to totally hide its colossal body below the water and expose only its two small ears that from even a close distance look like two little birds dancing on water.

Many victims of the hippo have been curious observers or careless water-farers who are entrapped by the cinematic sight of two small birds dancing on water. Below what appears to be two happy birds having a good dance on water, a good target for photographers and observers, is a sea monster that has overturned boats and killed humans in huge numbers.

When I read the unfortunate and disgusting note passed by Nelson Chamisa from under the table of a cabinet meeting to a Zanu PF minister, I thought of the ears of a hippo that look small and innocent like happy birds when below the surface lies a monstrosity of colossal proportions.

I write in this short article to observe that the saddening note that praised Mugabe in such pulsating poetry and decorated the name of the 87 years old dictator in flowery colours of "a great man in many ways" is only a pimple on the skin that announces a deadly cancer in the blood, bones and flesh of MDC-T as a political organisation in Zimbabwe.

The sorry note that praises the genocidal tyrant in such fashion that Nathaniel Manheru's speeches and articles defending Mugabe are collapsed into childish attempts must be read as a dangerous political sign that must jolt all Zimbabweans, Africans and the international community into an urgent realisation of how the MDC-T has for so long worked overtime to protect Mugabe while pretending to oppose him.

The international organisations and governments that have donated so much money to MDC-T, the many Zimbabweans that have given votes and sacrificed their lives believing that in MDC-T, the genocidal dictator that Mugabe is, has found a formidable opponent must now accept the bad news that after all, the MDC-T is an organisation whose pretended opposition to Mugabe is an alarming political ruse.

Ask any competent student of language and communication. There is no need for a forensic discourse or textual analysis of the note, the signature of Chamisa's pretentious diction and over-rehearsed syntax that is typical of those under-informed communicators is scribbled all over the note. Those who have long understood the MDC-T will not be surprised that Chamisa wrote that sell-out and treacherous note. In fact, what is surprising and interesting is that Zanu PF ministers are now prepared to share with Zimbabweans the sell-out messages and supplications that the traitors in MDC-T send to Mugabe through his ministers under cabinet desks and cover of darkness.

My question to Nelson Chamisa is simple, if you are telling the truth that the Machiavellians in Zanu PF have forged a criminal note and manufactured a sell-out message to taint and pollute your "good name" as a "white dove" that you claim to be, why don't you sue for justice and truth? Even in Zimbabwe, the most corrupt and mediocre court will help to probe the truth and clear your "white" wings of a "dove".

The reason why Chamisa will not sue is that he knows that the truth will out and prove that actually he is a dark owl that during the day pretends to be an eagle for justice and democracy in Zimbabwe, while at night he sends politically romantic messages to Mugabe through his loyal ministers, obviously applying for his favours and polishing his genocidal ego. In a normal society, Chamisa would have resigned, not only from government but from all public life.

Another reason, patient reader, for Chamisa's refusal to insist on the truth including court action is that the unfortunate note that the Zanu PF minister has shown to us might just be one of many notes. Chamisa obviously fears an avalanche of many other "wikileaks" from the Zanu PF minister who most probably has been carefully and calculatedly filing the notes to use at an opportune time.

Understanding that Chamisa's sell-out note and the many others that we believe the slippery  Zanu PF minister, who is not difficult to guess out, is keeping are just the ears of a hippo, it is fitting at this juncture that we go under the water , leave the ears alone, and observe the monster itself that lies in wait to sell Zimbabwe to the genocidal regime of Robert Mugabe.

It is also noteworthy that Morgan Tsvangirai himself will not condemn Chamisa because he has done more alarming praises of Mugabe in public and international fora. One can only imagine what he has said in private and under the cover of cabinet desks and darkness.

In September 2010, Tsvangirai told David Smith of the UK Guardian newspaper that "Mugabe is my hero", not only that but Tsvangirai said Mugabe only showed his dictatorial tendencies and violent nature "in the past ten years", which excludes the genocidal Gukurahundi period where more than 20,000 Ndebeles were massacred by Mugabe.

Thokozani Khuphe, Sam Sipepa Nkomo and Lovemore Moyo, senior MDCT officials who hail from villages where there are Gukurahundi mass graves and many orphans, have never publicly questioned Tsvangirai's apparent support for Mugabe when it comes to Gukurahundi. This is a serious historical and political disorder given how the people of Matabeleland have voted for Tsvangirai, in hope for justice and how Tsvangirai has insisted that Mugabe will not be prosecuted for the genocide.

British journalist Alec Russell also wrote in the FinancialTimes that British Prime Minister David Cameron was "lost for words" when he heard Tsvangirai's "bright eyed and bushy tailed description" of Mugabe. Tsvangirai had oozed praises and laudations for Mugabe as a "legendary statesmen and a human being like me and you." Russell observed in the same article that "the Zanu PF lion, lying down with the MDCT sheep … is unconvincing".

The truth is not that Zanu PF is a lion and the MDC-T a sheep, the two are lion and cub, Castle Larger and Castle Lite if that clarifies the conniving and genocidal conspiracy that punctuates the relationship between the two political organisations.

We learnt from WikiLeaks cables that Tsvangirai was compared to Lech Walesa, the polish union leader who was popular before he was elected into office as president, and proved a monumental disaster when he was. We also learnt that he was observed by his funders and handlers to be one of "questionable judgment" and needing "hand holding."

All these telling descriptions of Tsvangirai and by extension of MDC-T might be missing the point by a huge margin. Tsvangirai is, after all, a willing and active participant is in the game of not opposing Mugabe but using the guise of opposition to enrich himself and at the same time protect Mugabe, his hero.

Even professor Steven Chan, whose biographical narrative 'Citizen of African: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai', praised Tsvangirai and imagined him to be a heroic African admitted in an article, 'Thetragedy of Tsvangirai', that the MDC-T leader has "lost his bearings" and is after all a liability to democracy in Zimbabwe.

Pedzisayi Ruhanya, a Zimbabwean political commentator, activist and well known Zanu PF opponent recently wrote to condemn "the violence, tribalism and Zanu PF"culture in the MDC-T .What Ruhanya and others might yet have to confirm is that after all, Tsvangirai and the elite in the MDC-T have not been created or designed to oppose Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe but just to irritate.

How else can we explain the painful paradoxes and rude ironies of Chamisa's praises of Mugabe and Tsvangirai record of outdoing Nathaniel Manheru in describing Mugabe's nonexistent heroism and imagined accomplishments?

British journalist John Pilger once observed that the world is run through "master illusions." American marines "marched into Iraq carrying weapons of mass destruction" searching for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction which they never found, even after killing the masses in Iraq and destroying infrastructure, he said.

What they came out with was America's smoother access to cheap oil from the Arab world. Tsvangirai and the MDC-T are perpetuating "a master illusion" of devilish proportions, pretending to be leading Zimbabweans against the genocidal tyranny of Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF while under the cover of darkness they praise him and ensure that he is not to be prosecuted for genocide.

For Zimbabweans, Africans and the international community at large, it is time to separate dancing birds from the two ears of the dangerous political hippo whose deception and deadly disguise must be exposed for what it is. The reason why Tsvangirai will never occasion a Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, or Ivory Coast political scenario in Zimbabwe is simply because one cannot dethrone a tyrant by admiring and praising him.

Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana writes from Swaziland and can be contacted on dinizulumacaphulana@yahoo.com