A quick lesson in self-destruction

Sometimes what you think will save you is actually the thing that destroys you. It is unlike what Shakespeare had in mind. It's much more tragic.

Because unlike the knavery Hamlet speaks of when he says "For 'it is the sport to have the engineer/ Hoist with his own petard", in this case we are talking about someone who thinks they are acting in their best interest, only to see that best-interest-action leading to their demise.

A quick illustration will do, hopefully it does not fall foul of political correctness.

A man picks a woman at a bar. He takes her to the seedy, third-rate, dingy "hot sheets" joint across the street for a nip of forbidden fruit. At the point of consummation, he realises he does not have the requisite protection.

Begging for forbearance, he decides to dash back to the bar to buy said latex lifesaver. But as he crosses the street, he is struck by a car and dies.

Had he chosen to take the risk and proceeded without venturing back across the road to save himself from potential venereal viral threat, that man may be alive today.

But sometimes what we think will save us is the road to our demise.

Mr Morgan Tsvangirai was destroyed by the very thing that he had long sought. He wanted power.

President Mugabe, in 2009, made him the Prime Minister of the Republic. Mr Tsvangirai realised too late that being in opposition politics was his saviour. He didn't need more than that. After all, he makes a good opposition leader. He makes — or at least used to make— the ruling party get up and act. He spurred Zanu-PF into action, much as some people in the establishment might not want to publicly acknowledge it.

After all, it was Mr Tsvangirai's dogged pursuance of opposition politics that jolted Zanu-PF into electoral seriousness in 2013, prompting them the ruling party to come up with a people-oriented issues-led campaign that year.

Mr Tsvangirai was the Prime Minister. He saw that invitation by President Mugabe into the corridors of power as his "arrival" — murume anga asvika!

It is that "arrival" in what he thought was the 'Promised Land' that made him forget his role as a leader of the opposition, made him think paying lobola of US$36 000 and then less than a month later paying gupuro of US$300 000 was all OK.

It wasn't OK.

The disillusioned local support base dwindled. The Western donor community watched aghast.

Because 2013 was to come and go, taking with it the trappings of power that Mr Tsvangirai had so aggressively pursued and so quickly become accustomed to.

And now Mr Tsvangirai is seducing Madam Joice Mujuru to join him in an unholy matrimony that they both think will deliver power to them but is in reality bringing swift grief. We have always known that Mr Tsvangirai is no Einstein. What we hadn't contended with was having another pretender to power outdoing Mr Tsvangirai in the race to the bottom of the IQ stakes.

Dr Mujuru seemingly had it all not too long ago. Even President Mugabe spoke of her going higher.

President Mugabe knows her well. After all, he gave her just about everything she had politically.

We all know she was plucked from the lower rungs of the administration and catapulted to the Vice-Presidency. Before that, he brought her into his first Cabinet as his youngest minister at Independence when she, by her own admission, knew she didn't deserve that.

Prior to that, she had unwittingly found herself in the liberation struggle camps in Zambia where the attentions of a succession of suitors placed her in good stead for political placement in leadership positions.

Indeed, her entire public career has been the result of patronage.

But now she thinks she is the best thing since sliced bread, and underlings like Mr Gift Nyandoro — who consistently shows he is far from being the sharpest tool in the shed — are trying to rewrite a history that they do not even understand.

The net result is greater scrutiny of Dr Mujuru's role over the years, and she should expect continued airing of dirty linen.

We do not mind her inflating her role. What we mind is her denigrating the contributions of men and women far better than her, and her insulting the man who gave her a chance at being something in life.

Her quest for power shall be her undoing.