Opinion / Columnist
MDC-T misconception of democracy disturbing
22 Jul 2011 at 04:32hrs | Views
Back in the village where the cotton wool heads reside in the peaceful idyll and serenity of the land of our ancestors, we are never short of wisdom.
In the village, especially in the land of milk honey and dust or Guruve, every woman is your mother and every man your father.
This villager's mother passed on some three years ago, some five years after his father had also departed to the world yonder. Tough luck!
While this villager has always had problems with the nitty-gritty of religion and religiosity: the art and the belief, surely his mother and father must be living in harmony wherever they are.
This villager is an orphan, by all definitions, or rather a middle-aged orphan, and he thinks it helps to be everyone's son.
The villager's mother was a woman. So it helps when it comes to understanding womanhood.
Each time, violence was mentioned, this villager's mother would subconsciously frown, concoct her face into a sorry and disbelief posture, her facial wrinkles becoming perpetrated, while pressing her tummy, too.
"Moyo wekubereka!" she would remark when challenged on her reaction to violence.
The full import of this villager giving the example of his mother Agnes in a national newspaper is that a couple of weeks ago, many of us in the village were quite shocked with what could come out of the mouth of a whole Home Affairs Minister.
Well, the village soothsayer says make it half-minister, since it is the dispensation in Zimbabwe today - a mother and citizen of Zimbabwe called Theresa Makone. It was quite some village politics, as the co-Minister, whom this villager so respected as mother, went brazenly eccentric about her propensity for violence.
After Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai irresponsibly preached violence at Mucheke Stadium in Masvingo, urging his supporters to take violence to the rival, and people's liberation vanguard, Zanu-PF.
Tsvangirai said his supporters should be ready to direct violence irrespective of who they might be. Makone, as one of the two ministers overseeing the Home Affairs brief that has the police under it should have been worried at these statements bent on fuelling anarchy.
But certainly not her! Not this villager's living mother. Said Makone - or is it Makonye, as the village soothsayer preferred to suit the filth lingua franca: "Zanu-PF used to beat us like drums and you expect us to say thank you. When I was young my mother told me if someone beats you, you should hit back."
Theresa . . . Theresa . . . Theresa! Mother Theresa? This villager thinks the late Mother Theresa - for all her proclivity for love, peace and respect - should be turning and twisting in her grave with anger, disbelief and disgust to have namesake in MDC-T.
That is the classic eye-for-eye scenario, which surely makes the world go blind as Mahatma Ghandi of India once aptly put it. One of the questions that beg for answers is the one that what kind of a mother, citizen and minister is this? Surely the prospect of violence and blood gushing out of battered faces and bodies should send any mother's insides turning?
And if there is an eye-for-eye type of anarchy where would be Makone's job? Where will it leave Zimbabwe?
Hezvoko MDC-T! Being a Minister is quite some job and worse still, when you are a woman, the world believes you carry with you motherly love. This villager who unlike others, had endeared himself with Makone, when she visited Themba Mliswa and other in police custody, now has other ideas.
When news broke out that she visited the accused, this villager remarked in public that she was being motherly. When those in MDC-T coined the phrase Kitchen Cabinet, it was because of Theresa Makone and others whom they accused of influencing party leader Morgan Tsvangirai to do the wrong things.
This villager thought it was unfair, for, a kitchen is where the food is prepared. But with such women in the kitchen and in the Cabinet, where are we headed for? A woman preaching violence? My foot! A mother preaching violence? My foot! Mother Theresa, where are you?
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In the village, especially in the land of milk honey and dust or Guruve, every woman is your mother and every man your father.
This villager's mother passed on some three years ago, some five years after his father had also departed to the world yonder. Tough luck!
While this villager has always had problems with the nitty-gritty of religion and religiosity: the art and the belief, surely his mother and father must be living in harmony wherever they are.
This villager is an orphan, by all definitions, or rather a middle-aged orphan, and he thinks it helps to be everyone's son.
The villager's mother was a woman. So it helps when it comes to understanding womanhood.
Each time, violence was mentioned, this villager's mother would subconsciously frown, concoct her face into a sorry and disbelief posture, her facial wrinkles becoming perpetrated, while pressing her tummy, too.
"Moyo wekubereka!" she would remark when challenged on her reaction to violence.
The full import of this villager giving the example of his mother Agnes in a national newspaper is that a couple of weeks ago, many of us in the village were quite shocked with what could come out of the mouth of a whole Home Affairs Minister.
Well, the village soothsayer says make it half-minister, since it is the dispensation in Zimbabwe today - a mother and citizen of Zimbabwe called Theresa Makone. It was quite some village politics, as the co-Minister, whom this villager so respected as mother, went brazenly eccentric about her propensity for violence.
After Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai irresponsibly preached violence at Mucheke Stadium in Masvingo, urging his supporters to take violence to the rival, and people's liberation vanguard, Zanu-PF.
Tsvangirai said his supporters should be ready to direct violence irrespective of who they might be. Makone, as one of the two ministers overseeing the Home Affairs brief that has the police under it should have been worried at these statements bent on fuelling anarchy.
But certainly not her! Not this villager's living mother. Said Makone - or is it Makonye, as the village soothsayer preferred to suit the filth lingua franca: "Zanu-PF used to beat us like drums and you expect us to say thank you. When I was young my mother told me if someone beats you, you should hit back."
Theresa . . . Theresa . . . Theresa! Mother Theresa? This villager thinks the late Mother Theresa - for all her proclivity for love, peace and respect - should be turning and twisting in her grave with anger, disbelief and disgust to have namesake in MDC-T.
That is the classic eye-for-eye scenario, which surely makes the world go blind as Mahatma Ghandi of India once aptly put it. One of the questions that beg for answers is the one that what kind of a mother, citizen and minister is this? Surely the prospect of violence and blood gushing out of battered faces and bodies should send any mother's insides turning?
And if there is an eye-for-eye type of anarchy where would be Makone's job? Where will it leave Zimbabwe?
Hezvoko MDC-T! Being a Minister is quite some job and worse still, when you are a woman, the world believes you carry with you motherly love. This villager who unlike others, had endeared himself with Makone, when she visited Themba Mliswa and other in police custody, now has other ideas.
When news broke out that she visited the accused, this villager remarked in public that she was being motherly. When those in MDC-T coined the phrase Kitchen Cabinet, it was because of Theresa Makone and others whom they accused of influencing party leader Morgan Tsvangirai to do the wrong things.
This villager thought it was unfair, for, a kitchen is where the food is prepared. But with such women in the kitchen and in the Cabinet, where are we headed for? A woman preaching violence? My foot! A mother preaching violence? My foot! Mother Theresa, where are you?
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Source - Zimpapers
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