Cde Mnangagwa has recovered, Cdes

Dear Cabinet and Politburo members

COMRADES, I must express my displeasure at the manner in which the sad news of Cde Rutanhire's passing was handled. It appeared as if the party does not have fully-fledged departments and government ministries to handle such situations in a manner that does not leave the party and its leadership with egg on the face.

Surely, how could the media be allowed to report Cde Martin revealing that Cde Rutanhire had not only died at a hospital for the poorest of the poor, but had also been taken there in a scotch cart, of all means of transport one can think of in this age? What picture does this paint of the party and its leadership, moreso if one considers the role Cde Rutanhire played in the liberation of this country?

Was his body not supposed to be spirited away from that seedy place to a more dignified medical facility … a place that is befitting of the well-cared for national hero that he was? That was not very thoughtful of you, Cdes!

We appear to be people who care about no one else, but ourselves. You know too well, Cdes, that there are those who claim that during the war, the leadership looked for people who were not our family members or relatives to join the war, fight and do the dying and after independence, we quickly forgot about these fighters as we got busy inviting our relatives and family members to enjoy the fruits of the victory. You, my Cdes, know that this is obviously not true … also that none of you members of my Cabinet are related to me in any other way except that we are members of the revolutionary party.

We should not be so careless as to give ammunition to those seeking to damage the image of the party.

These are the same morons claiming that Cde Emmerson was poisoned by our ice cream … this is mischief of a treasonous magnitude!

If anything, I am very happy that the Cde has quickly recovered from what doctors diagnosed as poisoning from stale food. I have no doubt the offending food originated from our Anglo-Saxon enemies … the same devils who have broken into his office a record seven times! Anyway, being the perennial survivor that he is, I had no doubt that his indefatigable fighting spirit would see him through to safety. This would have been the saddest of all months in the history of this country.

Our detractors have tried to explain these mysterious deaths and illnesses within the realms of witchcraft … what primitive hogwash! While it is true that there are some among us who could be witches and wizards who keep trying to use witchcraft to get power, I am too civilised to be so superstitious as to believe in the claptrap about witchcraft.

As you know, Cdes, we have never, in the history of our mature party, tried to resolve any disagreements using even the minimal form of violence, let alone wanton killings. Never, ever!

As I have said before, we have no culture of killing each other no matter how strongly we disagree as members of one big family. We take seriously the sages' wisdom that when brothers fight each other to death, a stranger will inherit their father's estate.

All those members of our party who have died in suspicious circumstances died at the hands of our enemies, not fellow party members.

Let me, here and now, make it clear once more that our righteous party has no tradition of killing, murdering or poisoning, bewitching, assisted suicides or engaging in enhanced automobile accidents in order to get rid of rivals.

How could you even think of that? Nobody in our party was involved in the murder by car bomb of Cde Chitepo in Lusaka, Zambia in 1975. Only the imperialists were capable of such evil deeds.

Of course we know that our fearless commander Cde Tongogara, may he continue to rest in peace, was driving a lorry on a rainy night when he was involved in a freak accident that claimed his life. Nobody bothered to check if the lorry's headlights and brakes were working properly. We only found out after our dear warrior was dead. And this happened on the eve of Christmas, 1979, the year of victory. Cde Josiah, of course, was very close to Cde Joshua Nkomo and he was adamant that we contest the elections as the Patriotic Front, which would have made an outright ZANU victory (and therefore absolute power) impossible. Being a democracy that we have always been, at no point did we hold that against him. We all loved and respected Umdala Wethu.

I have heard bad words that our party murdered Cde Rex. Of course we had our problems with the general. He was headstrong. All good generals are like that. At times we thought that he was in contact with the United States' notorious spy agency, the Central Intelligence Agency. How else could we explain that he was talking to that sell-out oppositionist, Morgan?

Be that as it may, we do not hold such grudges against our people … especially those who selflessly fought for the liberation of this country. This then explains why we have made it a point that whatever they do, they do not lose their place at the iconic hill. Cde Enos Nkala, Cde Edgar Tekere both who dismissed themselves from the party ended up there because we are a magnanimous leadership. We easily forgive.

It is also because we are such a forgiving party that we will not do anything bad to these people who are always ready to spread falsehoods against our party.

Let this not detract us from running a straight race to a sure victory in next year's harmonised elections. Challenge accepted.

Kindest Regards
Yours Sincerely
ME

. . .  AND THE NOTEBOOK

Silly!
We are told a whole Cabinet of multi-degree holders is going to sit down to deliberate on plans to ban night driving by cross border buses as a possible way to reduce passenger deaths on our sorry apologies for roads. We know failure when we see it! There is no clearer admission of failure than this!

By the way, these are the very same people who have in the past sat down to deliberate on the "blessing" of pure diesel that was reportedly gushing out of a rock in Maninga hills near Chinhoyi! Even if this Cabinet were, to all intents and purposes, a squad of drunken monkeys, it would certainly have something better to be seized with.

Most countries that develop make use of each and every nano-second available to them … there is no time to waste, that is how countries like China, Singapore, Malaysia, Qatar and others have developed, yet we have planners who think of getting the country to grind to a halt at night because they cannot get a decent transport infrastructure in place without demanding kickbacks! By the same warped logic, so if the fatal accidents continue to occur during the day after night driving has been banned, the next natural route to take would be to ban buses from the roads, right? We are a silly people, small wonder we are in this mess!

Worrisome
This other day, Dr CZ watched an interview on one of the many social media platforms in which representatives of the opposition who are busy trying to set up a grand coalition hopefully to dislodge ZANU-PF from power were waffling. Among those who made up the panel was MDC-T secretary general, Douglas Mwonzora, who upon being asked how the leadership of the many political parties with whom his party is signing a breathless succession of memoranda of understanding day and night would stand to benefit, his response was that government is a very big cake and everyone will have their share … as positions are not just ministerial, but they include diplomatic postings and many others.

If this is the mentality of the people we have in the opposition, then we are doomed as a nation! This had a depressing effect on Dr CZ, who has never had any real faith in both the ruling party and the opposition. To Mwonzora, it is all about sharing the spoils of victory, not about what these people can give to the country … but rather what they can get for themselves? One just gets a senior government post because they are a member of a party that coalesced with the MDC-T in upstaging ZANU-PF, even if they cannot tell their left from right? Right? How different is that from the current conspiracy in which appointments are made on patronage, not on qualification and need?

As already shown during the MDC-T's time in the inclusive government, it is not a party that is different at all from ZANU-PF. This explains the pincers of dilemma that many voters find themselves in when it comes to making the best pick between Sodom and Gomorrah!

Curious
As we are in the season of coalitions, one name that has caused some disquietude in the opposition circles is that of Cde Agrippa Mutambara, the war vet-turned-diplomat-turned-opposition figure who many seek to avoid like the plague.

He was accused by Judith Todd of raping her in the 1980s on orders from his superior as punishment for trying to bring attention to the genocide that was unfolding in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.

"I don't even understand this issue. Judith is a learned person and she should have taken the matter to the courts. I read about it and it doesn't make sense," Cde Mutambara was recently quoted as saying.

"However, as far as I am concerned, there is no bad blood between the two of us. That book took me by surprise. I still regard her as a friend and I don't believe she has anything against me as well."

We happen to agree with the principled stance that the freedom fighter has taken against Todd. It is not unusual for perpetrators of such acts not to hold anything against their victims, so expecting Cde Mutambara to be angry against - let alone sue - Todd would be unreasonable.

Dr CZ thinks Cde Mutambara's stance has been informed by the wisdom that Dr CZ came across in his riotous readings … that what is true in history is often less important than what people believe to be true!