Grace Mugabe, Baba Jukwa and the Olympics of Power in Zimbabwe

One stubborn theme that has arrested the attention of philosophers and poets from the childhood of humanity to the present era of technologised witchcraft is the theme of illusion and reality. When the political effects of illusions take place, reality remains buried behind clouds of myths and other impressions. When illusions are in force, analysts and commentators of any generation and any setting expend lifetimes of energy pontificating on non-events and none-issues. My reading of the Zimbabwean political climate and the key events and personalities that mark it, indicates that indeed most of what seems to be in the land of our forefathers is actually not, and what appears to be absent is present in amazing magnitudes.

I elect in this short article to treat the issue of the supposed sudden rise of Grace Mugabe to the helm of politics in Zimbabwe, and the intriguing Baba Jukwa saga, to as far as I can demonstrate that, in the main, Zimbabwe is effectively enveloped in political illusions. Most of us in the tribe of analysts and commentators tend to feed our analyses from public opinion and street wisdom instead of shaping public opinion with researched truths and informed opinions. Alex wa Magaisa wrote very recently to lament this situation where a lot of raw rumour and unpolished taxi rank invectives circulate as political knowledge. Most unfortunately, this dangerous political knowledge guides our political behaviour and shapes our voting trends. For the sheer fear of what illusions and myths can do once they are taken for reality and treated seriously, ancient Athenian philosopher Plato, went as far as to propose that poets, artists and other dealers in fiction and fantasy should be banished from the good society because they are traders in unreality. While history has largely eroded Plato's argument, and vindicated Aristotle who believed that illusions and imaginative poetics  are actually the  higher reality, we still need to be wary of losing ourselves into  the enterprise of chasing rats with machine guns when the monsters are abound.

Talking about the monsters, Zimbabwe appears to be going through monstrous times. As described by Antonio Gramsci, a political interregnum is that period when "the old is dying" but at the same time "the new cannot be born." During this period, Gramsci said "a great variety of morbid symptoms" and "monsters" tend to "appear." In Zimbabwe, the old ideas of doing politics and the old people that perpetuate these ideas are not only refusing to retire, to be replaced or pushed aside, or even to die, but have begun presenting themselves and their ideas as the only future. The young and their supposed new ideas that must carry the hopes of the future have collapsed even before the real race for power and control has begun. Such events as the surprise move ( to many people) by Grace Mugabe to indicate interest in power, and the rise of such headless and tailless entities as the Baba Jukwa phenomenon are just but symptoms of a monstrous political condition that is crying out for understanding.  In monstrous political climates, instead of using powerful language, and beautiful poetry and metaphors to captivate the publics and arrest their hearts and minds, the politicians use the hard language of power to incite violence and propose war. There is a world of difference between powerful language and the language of power. The trouble with Zimbabwe right now, and in short, is that the old is not dying fast enough, the young that was expected to take over is not emerging at all, a panic has arisen, the monsters are emerging and its effectively the Olympics of power politics at play.

 ‘Don't Take Photo': Grace is climbing the ladder
The sensitive among us have not recovered from the pulsating effect of the words "don't take photo, you are not supposed to take photo…" as Grace Mugabe, in a beseeching voice, pleaded with a photographer not to photograph Mugabe as he entered a cancer hospital in Malaysia. She said it in a voice that addressed the soul itself, smooth but deep and emphatic. This was not the same Grace Mugabe who in January 2009 punched journalist Richard Jones and badly bruised his face with her diamond ring. My point here is exactly that, there is a multiplicity of personas in Grace; she is many entities in one, depending on what the stakes are, and what the entry and exit points of her agendas are. For us to pick one characteristic of her and go to town with it as the definition of Grace Mugabe, we might end up remaining with a bunch of feathers in our hands when the hawk itself has flown off.

To start with, it is a fragile observation, by many, that the apparent appearance recently of a number of powerful Zanu PF women pleading with Grace Mugabe to lead their league indicates that she is a ‘dark horse' that might emerge and seize the presidency of Zanu PF and that of Zimbabwe. Dear readers, Grace Mugabe is a very white horse that has not been running but galloping towards the Zimbabwean presidential throne, for many years now. In that same gathering, she even invoked the metaphor of a ‘horse' to refer to her energies and she has amounts of them. The very unexpected and to some people improper marriage of Grace to Robert Mugabe was a game of power.

It is important for us to revisit the union of Grace Mugabe to Robert Mugabe that climaxed into matrimony and now a number of children. The prevalent illusion is that a powerful President Robert Mugabe with many years of life, experience and high political office, in a typical lion and the jewel scene, prevailed upon a very young and softly lady to become his illicit mistress and eventually his wife after the death of the largely admired Sally Hayfron-Mugabe. Far from it, what we have here is an old man who, according to his friends like Edgar Tekere and others, was never really a ladys' man or did he gather in his lifetime any experience in ensnaring slippery damsels or tricking young ladies into his bedroom. This is a rather romantically slow, and not into women old man who fell into the spider web snare of a big eyed Madonna.

She came into the office with arm-slings and blue eyes. Bandages and other items to do with injuries and bleeding became part of her dressing. Sometimes she just broke down and cried at work. If she was not absent from office nursing another injury, she was present narrating just how vicious the last beating was. Stanley Goreraza, her childhood sweetheart and air-force pilot was an incorrigible abusive low life who kicked, punched her and was one day soon going to murder her. Goreraza's side of the narratives will never be known. Mugabe initially gave sympathy, which was followed up with support and strong words of advice. She did not only receive the sympathy and support, she drowned herself in it, solicited it. The counseling sessions and advice from "papa" became longer and more vivid in nature. I argue that Mugabe might initially have seen in front of him a trustful daughter of sorts. She became more and more open about the lacks and deficits in her life, her marital life, and ‘papa' was there with shoulders and knees for his crying daughter. She even climbed further down in tone and manner from her then age to a real young and even innocent lady who was rudderless on marriage, life and its tribulations, needing ‘papa' to supply knowledge from all the basics to the fundamentals. It was the true allure of the demure.

Most adults know this, vivid sympathy by a man for a woman who is not his child or any relative, tinged with explicit details of marital lacks easily collapses to that electricity that burnt the world. No one was told what has changed but everyone came to see that the harvest season had come and gone in the Garden of Eden. Even after the fall of Adam, the illicit congress remained enveloped like an ugly family secret.

 Only that most of us concentrated on the obscene humour and forgot to observe the philosophy, when in the thickness of his trial for rape, Jacob Zuma alluded to a situation where it would have been against his ‘culture' and maybe against manliness to have allowed a lady to leave without his attentions, the argument in the final, was that he was entrapped by a politically sponsored woman. There is only enough that a man and a woman can handle. Islamists say when a man and a woman are left alone in privacy; the devil himself soon joins them.

That, dear readers, cannot be the full explanation to Grace Mugabe's current thriving political fortunes. No. We have for a long time occupied ourselves with that pathetic story of a secretary who was dominated and overwhelmed by a powerful big boss into an illicit affair. So absorbed by this illusory tale we have been that we have missed the stuff of Grace Mugabe as a political animal. We imagine a good and beautiful typist earning herself a good paying job in the office of the president of Zimbabwe, and ending up his wife. The truth appears to be that in actuality we had a strong willed young woman who actually qualified in her faculties and talents to work in "The Presidents's Office" in Zimbabwe. Working in the office of the president and functioning in the President's Office, handling presidential ‘information' are two very different jobs.

 I was personally pained when before the 2013 elections, from which we all have not recovered fully; Tsvangirai boasted in front of a rally that he has Mugabe's intelligence people supplying him with detailed information to the extent that he knew what Mugabe and others ate for breakfast and supper. True, Tsvangirai was being informed, but those informants were not working with him or for him, but they were working on him, and the results of that work are there for everyone to see. The person, dear readers, who can claim by virtue of her previous job where she still retains admiring contacts, and her current station, that she knows what everyone out there in Zimbabwean politics is doing is Grace Mugabe. As a man and an old one for that matter, Mugabe can keep his right to insist that he courted and married Grace Mugabe, but as most men know, and women too, it may not be an easy thing to tell  who the hunter is and who the hunted is.

Obscene stories have been told of some senior Zanu-PF war types with storied liberation war credentials who kneel down when Grace Mugabe approaches and refer to her as "Her Excellency." This happens for two reasons, in a patronage driven party like Zanu-PF, getting the wife of the president to put in a good word for one as a good this and good that can help. Secondly, Grace Mugabe has built her own power in symbol and in substance that cannot be ignored by anyone that loves their future within Zanu-PF and sometimes outside. This power is exercised by Grace Mugabe not really in secrecy from her husband, but in most times those who work for her, and with her, and on her behalf, in business and society, believe that her and Mugabe are indistinguishable. Which is not necessarily true in all circumstances as Grace does not necessarily have to play a video of her business dealings to her husband. To show that Mugabe does not really get all the truth in the businesses that exist in Harare and in Zimbabwe at large, and some which might have links to his family members, we only need to remember the day Mugabe accused a certain business player of having received a huge bribe from investors. The business player denied the allegations politely. Everyone thought the fellow was headed for Chikurubi until after a few days Mugabe publicly announced that he was misinformed, but he never took the nation into his confidence as to exactly where the footprints of the big money ended and that case seems to have died a very unnatural death. The sign is that the answers to the many questions regarding that case rest far too closer to home and to comfort of the president.

Even bigger in all this, and more important for us to understand the fierce Olympics of power in Zanu-PF and in Zimbabwe now, is that Grace Mugabe is getting political encouragement also from some  in Zanu-PF who really don't believe in her as a potential leader of a party and a country for that matter. However, there is something, dear readers, which Grace Mugabe presently can do for Zimbabwe and the world---look Robert Mugabe in the eye and convince him to retire. We can talk about powerful securocrats, we can talk about Joice Mujuru and Emmerson Munangagwa, the ‘Ngwena,' and all that, the person who can be relied upon to do it, and do it with astounding success is Grace Mugabe. The idea is that if Grace is shown a green light towards a political and personal future where she will not be vulnerable, and where she might after all be a power house and in charge, she might see the need for Mugabe to move from office, so that her own personal political fortunes can reach fruition. This is however a gamble, by her and those who are piloting this idea. It is a delicate balance of her spirited political agenda and the intentions of those who are forced to lend her support in return for her helping to retire her husband.

From Grace Mugabe's background as I have presented it here, to her present fortuitous status, we have an iron-willed lady who might not have the hard ware of power such as die hard support in the army or a feared war record, no. But we have a political player who has the soft-ware of political power in Zimbabwe, she can use this to propel herself to the ultimate pinnacle of power or she can use it to bargain for a powerful position with those who have the hard-ware but not exactly the software. Large among the assortment of softwares that she has is Mugabe's ear, and indeed the ability to get him to do this and not that. Her poets and prophets, and she has many of them, have planted it into her that she is a biblical queen destined to be near and within power.

At his old age, and possibly also the health that is not favouring him at the moment, Mugabe has a sharp and willing ear for what the ancestors and the prophets have said. God has suddenly become important to Mugabe. Some of us will remember that his address at his previous birthday celebration collapsed into a sermon on the mount about how God has taken all his peers and left him alive. So this and that prophet comes forward, and the enterprising among them actually see visions about the future of the first family, and they hear God himself saying this and that.

 I was surprised when many people were surprised by one prominent prophet who even prophesied that he could, in a vision "see factories running." Not surprising either, is Mugabe's own prophetic insistence that the dying economy is on the mend. Mugabe has become enveloped in a prophetic climate, a vivid one where really the things of the world are diminishing in value as prophecy and what God wants is what must happen. Grace Mugabe herself, to those who paid attention, refused to say that members of the Zanu-PF women's league have spoken to her about power; she said it was the ‘voice of God' that has spoken. Even the many pastors and prophets who make millions and amass obscene assets working with and for her, thank not their luck and political connections, but God almighty. That is the danger dear readers, when fallible individuals, who Niccolo Machiavelli famously said "are either good or bad but for the purposes of politics must be treated as bad" tend to think that what they think and what they do is from God, then we are all in danger. This is the rise of political messianism and fundamentalism that leads to genocides and wars. Christopher Hitchens' shocking book, God is not Great, does not dismiss the idea of God, but condemns the actions of humans who use the name of God and that of religion to cover up their personal projects that may not be holy.

To her personal credit, Grace Mugabe knows how to balance the scales of power and keep those who might upset her chariot happy. The observant among us noted it on the day the women of the league made their spirited plea to her. She spent significant minutes praising Mugabe as an astute politician with amazing gifts of thought. She really had to do that on that day, keep Mugabe believing that he is grooming and producing her into a fiery politician. It is good for her that Mugabe does not suddenly wake up to the fact that she has become a political creature of her own that is planning a life of power beyond his. In the venerated name and symbol of Mugabe, and that of God, Grace has found her talismans of power. It is VaMugabe this and God that, but what is actually at play is the spirited political project of Grace Mugabe in full march. Mugabe must be kept believing in his power and effects while the reality remains that he is now a captive in the calabash of a political sorcerer.

Many innocent Zimbabweans were shell shocked when during the noisy divorce media quarrels between Minister Ignatius Chombo and his wife, it emerged that the Minister was unbelievably rich. Chombo is not necessarily a Zanu-PF veteran; he is largely a mafikizolo who is reputed for selling meat from his briefcase when he was a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. For him to have amassed so much in a short time is telling of how the seniors in Zanu-PF are worth. Solomon Mujuru's estate was publicly estimated at an incredible Nine Billion United States dollars at the time of his death. Grace Mugabe is worth much more than that, only that her fortune in bleeding cash and in assets is carefully concealed under the names of her carefully chosen and trusted fronts that fear her to the last cell. The fronts are some of Harare's inexplicable billionaires and untouchables who subscribe to the vogue of the prosperity gospels and publicly claim to be apolitical. The fronts are found in the mining, farming, construction, manufacturing and other industries, in Zimbabwe and outside in some friendly countries. Besides the understandable fear of losing her massive fortune, what is driving Grace Mugabe to politics and what takes the sleep away from her eyes in the day and in the night is to suddenly wake up an ordinary person in Zimbabwe when Mugabe is gone. She will not have that. She will mobilise all her fortune and all the energies and spirits of the universe to ensure that she remains not only relevant but also powerful in Zimbabwe.

As Mugabe naturally fades in energy and in spirit, Grace Mugabe will increasingly step forward. The next few months will see a lot of melodramatic events as her poets and prophets seek to re-invent her in the eyes of the publics. Her faith and support for Mugabe will be magnified and we will be reminded that few women would have stood by such a universally loathed and sanctioned leader. She will be called brave. Not in so many words, she will be packaged as the oxygen of Mugabe's Third Chimurenga struggle. The jab that she recently threw at Tendai Biti is only a beginning; soon she will start, in the fashion of Mugabe himself, to lash out at real and imagined opponents. Soon enough she will establish herself as indeed a Mugabe. We only have to stretch our memories a little, during the days of Grace's marriage to Mugabe, a close relative of hers was televised saying something to the effect that "we always knew that one day Grace was going to do something great, what exactly we really did not know." Dear readers; in Grace Mugabe, Zimbabwe has a political player with a hardihood that exceeds that of Mugabe himself. Security personnel at State House know her as the tigress that in anger sinks her teeth on their hands as they restrain her from marching into the streets to surrender herself to the enemies of an ungrateful man who does not respect her support!

Baba Jukwa and the Goblin that went Rogue
I argue that there is all this legal and political noise in Zimbabwe concerning the Baba Jukwa entity because those who created the creature have lost control of it as it has assumed a life of its own and chosen to align with the aspirations of some people of Zimbabwe and a certain group within Zanu-PF.

 Most of us with strong rural and village backgrounds will remember one or two stories from the village about those who bought or manufactured goblins, notorious creatures of the dark arts of witchcraft and sorcery. The power and wealth seekers who use goblins have a tendency to send them to torment opponents and to steal money and other valuables. Goblins are supposed to be creatures of a program who are loyal and who stick to instructions religiously. Once in a while, some goblins begin to enjoy their personal power, believe in themselves and start making unsanctioned appearances and in the worst of circumstances they forge alliances with the enemies of their owner and begin to torment him and make ridiculous demands such as being allowed to sleep with his wife or children. There are many ways in which the Baba Jukwa entity resembles a goblin that has gone rogue.

If we look carefully, very carefully, the Baba Jukwa entity was created as a tool to pre-empt the opposition and usurp its support toward and after the elections of 2013. It was created even to take away the victory from the opposition if it won the election. This entity claimed to have been a Zanu-PF cadre that had decided to join the people of Zimbabwe against "my party." It claimed to have many militants and soldiers on standby to ensure that the people of Zimbabwe are not robbed again and that their vote would not be stolen. For that good reason this entity became just what Zimbabweans needed, armed security for their popular vote.

 The opposition was excited about this entity to the extent that they became assured of its support and that it would secure their victory after the election. The entity kept the opposition assured by praising them here and there, and warning them of this and that. Now, here is the plan, if the opposition had won the election, a group of Zanu-Pf strong ones were going to make an appearance and an announcement about themselves as the Baba Jukwa element and demand their share of power from the opposition with part of the army and some security elements on their side. The opposition were going to be forced to share power, in reality with Zanu-PF again. The explosive disclosures of Zanu-PF's murderous secrets were meant to buy credibility for the entity among Zimbabweans who are fed up of Zanu-PF, and also to present the entity as part of the opposition, but in reality the element remained a die-hard Zanuist that wanted to buy space in power if the opposition happened to win, this entity was a kind of Zanu-PF plan B, if other election strategies did not work. This entity was going to be a Zanu-PF without the name and the sins of Zanu-PF.

In truth this entity is huge; it had the capacity to seize power in Zimbabwe if ZANU-PF lost the election. It had effectively set itself up as a middle force between Zanu-PF and the opposition. It was designed to ensure that Zanu-PF, a core of it, does not lose power even if it loses the election. Only if Zanu-PF lost the election, Zimbabweans and the whole world were going to see what a massive creature this was as individuals and groups came out to claim the name and demand their share of the newly found power, soon enough it was going to appear that except for a few individuals that would fall by the side, the new government was to be dominated by Zanu-PF characters once again. The Baba Jukwa entity was a kind of parachute for some Zanuist to eject themselves from the crashing plane. This was an intelligently made creature whose job was to kill Zanu-PF and still keep some Zanu-PF politicians in power as part of the new victorious establishment.

 Picture a number of Zanu-PF insiders seated in a room saying ‘we are Zanu-PF, but we are fed up of our party's sins so we are confessing all the sins of our party, we are now part of the opposition." After the election these insiders will say "we did the dirty and the dangerous job of killing Zanu-PF, we are so many, we have soldiers, police, the intelligence and we need so much power in the new government, we lay these terms and conditions, or else we render this place ungovernable." As things stood, these Zanu-PF insiders were going to be the new heroes of Zimbabwe, their national and international support was going to be amazing. Songs were going to be sung and poems recited about brave Zimbabweans who from the belly of the beast managed to rescue their country from collapse.

When Zanu-Pf won the election, the entity which was created as a plan B election tool had suddenly become jobless, but it remained powerful and dangerous as it had mobilised so much Zimbabwean and even world following. It had grown too big and had begun to enjoy its own popularity as an entity. The mistake if it is a mistake that the entity made within Zanu-PF, was to change allegiances, it abandoned those who created it and got bewitched and mersmerised by a political project of the opponents of its creators. Those who created it, knowing its talents and its power got alarmed and sought to destroy it by whatever means and to destroy those that have adopted their creature and appropriated its massive power for themselves. The people that created the Baba Jukwa entity are angry people, the young among us know that red anger that one gets when he brings a trophy girl to a party, as soon as the party begins in earnest, the salacious thing begins to dance with one's worst rivals and gives one not even a wink of attention as she hugs and kisses with ones' enemies. While in romantic circles this has led to many crimes of passion, in Zanu-PF it has resulted in the recent poetry of anger and power that we have recently witnessed.

 A legitimate question to ask is, why then are those who created the entity not naming and shaming it? This is a tricky creature. They cannot name it without destroying themselves in the process. The only thing they can do is to blame it on their enemies within the party as the owners and creators of the entity. As it happens in the village, the besieged owner of the goblin that has gone rogue, as soon as it starts haunting him, or exposing him to the public, he quickly blames it on jealousy neighbhours as witches that have set a goblin upon him. What we are having in Zimbabwe is a gigantic illusion where those who secretly created the Baba Jukwa entity are now publicly claiming to be hunting for it. Attempts will be made to get those who adopted the creature to pay the price of creating it but this will not really work as the creature has created some of the most improbable and very powerful allegiances within the Zanu-PF, military and intelligence establishment. Some of the traditionally powerful politicians in Zimbabwe who were tipped to rule are now but shadows and illusions of power as the entity, in its emphatic silence, takes a firmer grip of the chains of power and control within the party and the country.

Another reason why this creature is difficult is that it was created from the start in the realm of the intelligence, in the secret state. It was built in such a way that it can fizzle into thin air or destroy itself and leave no trace. Those who interacted with it were given room for plausible denialability. For that reason, many of its organs, the individuals that form it are not known to each other. It is a spooky creature that can throw around decoys and other disguises to keep investigators busy. It is like witchcraft where individuals will accuse each other of it without providing reasonable evidence to secure guilt or innocence. It has become, in Zanu-PF, a stick with which opponents bit each other. Anyone who does not like another accuses them of having links with the entity or of being the entity itself.

Can we bid farewell to Monsters?
Clearly, from the Grace Mugabe political intervention to the Baba Jukwa saga, Zimbabweans in Zanu-PF and outside are engaged in the fierce Olympics of power. The country is enveloped in conspiracies and counter conspiracies, individuals are jostling and bargaining for power. Others are proposing power sharing while others seek to seize power by any means necessary. The question dear reader is; exactly what power is there to be seized or shared in Zimbabwe? From where I am standing, we have personality and partisan contests parading themselves as national struggles for freedom. As things stand, any clique that might seize power in Zimbabwe will be victorious but it would leave out many powerful aggrieved and angry cliques that will soon launch their own war against the victors. How can we penetrate the illusions and establish a debate on power and the future in Zimbabwe? There is need to depart from the politics of monstrosities to that of a collective future.

Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana is a Pretoria based Zimbabwean Political Scientist and Semiotician: dinizulumacaphulana@yahoo.com