Opinion / Columnist
Writing's on the bright yellow wall
15 Jan 2023 at 04:38hrs | Views
The Bishop is back.
What a restful, restorative and therapeutic sabbatical it was!
Once in a while, it is quite helpful to extricate ourselves from the maddening rush of our manic lifestyles, as well as the hyper-toxic environment of social media – or is it anti-social media? – in order to detoxify and rediscover our sanity.
It is often in silence and solitude that we reconnect with that divine and unadulterated inner voice that is the lighthouse to our lives.
It is also in silence and solitude that we encounter the spiritual essence of God.
In 1 Kings 19: 11-13, we find the following: "The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.'
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave."
You see, the Lord was not in the great and powerful wind, nor was he in the earthquake and fire, but he came in a gentle whisper.
So, after his long sabbatical, the Bishop comes back to the frenzied world of the living in peace and with peace.
Gird your loins
However, as 2023 moves apace, with 15 days of the new year already spent, we must gird our loins for a largely consequential year that will be characterised by bristling political contestation in the upcoming elections.
For the greater part of the year, elections would be the sun around which our lives will orbit.
Soon, and very soon, we will unavoidably mutate into political creatures that survive on eating, talking, sleeping, breathing and living politics.
Most often than not, whenever serious political business is transacted, emotions run high, nerves are frayed and egos are wounded. It will be hot, heavy and heady.
It is a time that lily-livered creatures dread the most.
As Bishop Lazi always says, politics, which deals with existential and bread-and-butter issues, is not a beauty pageant, but beastly business.
The stakes are always high.
Although elections are yet to be proclaimed, it is now open season for politicians as electioneering has already begun.
On New Year's Eve, musician Winky D, whom we know where his political allegiances lie, began drip-feeding the market with songs from his new album, which, to all intents and purposes, are a soundtrack for the opposition CCC's campaign to wrest power from Zanu-PF.
And the CCC posse are loving it, not because of the craft and substance, but its political stance and posturing.
The timing, messaging and audience are deliberate and targeted.
They might pretend all they want, but most of those songs are poorly disguised political jingles meant to sway the youths to vote against the establishment.
But the young man is perfectly entitled and even empowered by our supreme law, the Constitution, to associate with whomsoever he wants and sing whatever he likes.
The only challenge arises when "allegations" or "revelations" are made that the album was a sponsored project meant to whip up anti-Government sentiment.
They say if you drag an ant-infested log home, do not be surprised if lizards pay you a visit.
The identity of the sponsors – who have no business interfering in local politics by virtue of their nationalities, interests, designation and motives — make it even worse.
Last week, record executive DJ Fantan lifted the veil on what Winky D's overhyped musical effort was all about.
"But sa elder mu industry (read Winky D) when you do certain projects you must enlighten the youths you engage zvizere kuti project riri funded and tave kuimba zvematongerwo enyika so that anopinda achida nemoyo wake munyaya dzacho," he said in a message posted on his social media platforms.
"Ini ndiri kutaura se munhu aka groomer and aka mentor most of the youths vari pa project iroro. Zvirikundirwadza to see them crying behind the scenes kuti takakandwa pasi pe bhazi nemukuru wedu kumagitare. Right now mukuru vaya vari ku Dubai ku Holiday ne family yavo zvavo zvakaita."
Yuwi!
To put it succinctly, Winky D allegedly recruited unsuspecting youths to contribute to a musical project that was designed to insidiously sell a political message for the opposition.
After rich pickings from his treacherous enterprise, he subsequently jetted off to Dubai to enjoy his ostensibly ill-gotten lucre.
Is it not ironic that someone who masquerades as a prophet of the so-called downtrodden ghetto youths is living a fabulous life and making a decent fortune from the same environment he considers wretched?
Why would a project that was purportedly touted to unite local artistes violently split them asunder?
It seems to have succeeded in sowing disunity rather than cultivating unity.
Food for thought!
Matthew 7: 16-20 tells us, "By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them."
But Bishop Lazi does not give a hoot about what the naïve young man does with his life or sings about — nothing will turn on it — but would want to draw your attention to the hybridisation of the asymmetric warfare currently being waged by the West to dislodge the regime in Harare.
Folks, as the elections draw nearer, get ready for a heavy dose of sensational drama, contrived stunts, hyper-active social media websites churning fake news and fiction, fake prophecies and paid pollsters in a desperate and concerted campaign to sway votes in the opposition's favour.
As the Bishop said earlier, the idea is to keep the population, especially the youths, who are widely viewed as kingmakers of this political epoch, sufficiently agitated and riled up enough to vote against the ruling party.
The worst-case scenario is to besmirch and soil the electoral process and elections management body (ZEC) to create grounds for a disputed electoral outcome.
Last year, Government had to take the extraordinary step to force one foreign mission to abandon its plan to sponsor local artistes to further their political objectives, as this was in flagrant breach of Article 41(1) of the Vienna Convention, which enjoins diplomats not to interfere in the internal affairs of the receiving state.
President ED told us as much in his article published in The Sunday Mail on July 17 last year.
"Lately, we have witnessed attempts at interfering in our internal affairs by some Foreign Missions accredited to our country. This worrisome propensity is likely to get even more blatant closer to our harmonised general elections slated for next year, in 2023," he warned.
"Again, we have seen some Missions mobilising our artistes and communicators for partisan political ends. We have had to order one Mission to drop such hideous plans."
It forced one excitable and energetic young Jiti musician who had fallen for the trick to bin his nascent political activism.
Futile
Bishop Lazarus perfectly understands those who claim the political playing field is skewed — against the ruling party.
The decay, rot and wreckage wrought by 23 years of sanctions has become the de facto manifesto of the opposition.
As was intended by the West that conceived them, our wretched conditions born out of sanctions are being conveniently weaponised by being packaged as the fruits of incompetence, mismanagement and corruption.
This is by design rather than default.
But all this will come to naught.
If you have been paying attention, you would have noted that recent statistics from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) indicate that as at May 30, 2022, the country had 5,8 million registered voters compared to 5,6 million in 2007/2008.
The bulk of these voters live in Zanu-PF strongholds, which is unsurprising, as 61,4 percent of Zimbabweans live in rural areas.
It gets even grimmer.
In the six provinces in which Zanu-PF almost had a clean sweep in the 2018 elections — Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Masvingo, Midlands and Matabeleland South— there are more than 3,5 million voters.
To put this into perspective, Zanu-PF claimed 57 of the 62 constituencies that were contested in the Mashonaland provinces in 2018, while it won 25 of 26 in Masvingo, 12 of 13 in Mat South and 22 of the 27 seats on offer in the Midlands province.
In also dominated in other provinces, except Harare and Bulawayo, where it, however, witnessed resurgent support.
Numbers do not lie!
It would take a statistical miracle for the opposition to wrest power from a political behemoth that performed satisfactorily even at a time when it was undergoing a profound political transition.
In the coming weeks, the Bishop will be sharing with you cold, hard facts of why the 2023 elections will likely be calamitous for the opposition.
Writing recently for "The Conversation", a network of not-for-profit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, Blessing-Miles Tendi, an associate professor of African Politics at Oxford University, sounded what could be described as an eerie warning.
"The future of opposition politics is also on the ballot. Since 2018, the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party has had to contend with internal splits and underfunding.
In the intervening years, it has failed to get large numbers of new voters onto the electoral register.
"If the ruling Zanu-PF party pulls off the overwhelming election victory it is working towards, it is likely that the opposition will be further saddled with division and disillusionment, posing an existential threat to the kind of vibrant opposition politics led by the MDC in the past two decades."
The writing is obviously on the bright yellow wall.
Bishop out!
What a restful, restorative and therapeutic sabbatical it was!
Once in a while, it is quite helpful to extricate ourselves from the maddening rush of our manic lifestyles, as well as the hyper-toxic environment of social media – or is it anti-social media? – in order to detoxify and rediscover our sanity.
It is often in silence and solitude that we reconnect with that divine and unadulterated inner voice that is the lighthouse to our lives.
It is also in silence and solitude that we encounter the spiritual essence of God.
In 1 Kings 19: 11-13, we find the following: "The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.'
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave."
You see, the Lord was not in the great and powerful wind, nor was he in the earthquake and fire, but he came in a gentle whisper.
So, after his long sabbatical, the Bishop comes back to the frenzied world of the living in peace and with peace.
Gird your loins
However, as 2023 moves apace, with 15 days of the new year already spent, we must gird our loins for a largely consequential year that will be characterised by bristling political contestation in the upcoming elections.
For the greater part of the year, elections would be the sun around which our lives will orbit.
Soon, and very soon, we will unavoidably mutate into political creatures that survive on eating, talking, sleeping, breathing and living politics.
Most often than not, whenever serious political business is transacted, emotions run high, nerves are frayed and egos are wounded. It will be hot, heavy and heady.
It is a time that lily-livered creatures dread the most.
As Bishop Lazi always says, politics, which deals with existential and bread-and-butter issues, is not a beauty pageant, but beastly business.
The stakes are always high.
Although elections are yet to be proclaimed, it is now open season for politicians as electioneering has already begun.
On New Year's Eve, musician Winky D, whom we know where his political allegiances lie, began drip-feeding the market with songs from his new album, which, to all intents and purposes, are a soundtrack for the opposition CCC's campaign to wrest power from Zanu-PF.
And the CCC posse are loving it, not because of the craft and substance, but its political stance and posturing.
The timing, messaging and audience are deliberate and targeted.
They might pretend all they want, but most of those songs are poorly disguised political jingles meant to sway the youths to vote against the establishment.
But the young man is perfectly entitled and even empowered by our supreme law, the Constitution, to associate with whomsoever he wants and sing whatever he likes.
The only challenge arises when "allegations" or "revelations" are made that the album was a sponsored project meant to whip up anti-Government sentiment.
They say if you drag an ant-infested log home, do not be surprised if lizards pay you a visit.
The identity of the sponsors – who have no business interfering in local politics by virtue of their nationalities, interests, designation and motives — make it even worse.
Last week, record executive DJ Fantan lifted the veil on what Winky D's overhyped musical effort was all about.
"But sa elder mu industry (read Winky D) when you do certain projects you must enlighten the youths you engage zvizere kuti project riri funded and tave kuimba zvematongerwo enyika so that anopinda achida nemoyo wake munyaya dzacho," he said in a message posted on his social media platforms.
"Ini ndiri kutaura se munhu aka groomer and aka mentor most of the youths vari pa project iroro. Zvirikundirwadza to see them crying behind the scenes kuti takakandwa pasi pe bhazi nemukuru wedu kumagitare. Right now mukuru vaya vari ku Dubai ku Holiday ne family yavo zvavo zvakaita."
Yuwi!
To put it succinctly, Winky D allegedly recruited unsuspecting youths to contribute to a musical project that was designed to insidiously sell a political message for the opposition.
After rich pickings from his treacherous enterprise, he subsequently jetted off to Dubai to enjoy his ostensibly ill-gotten lucre.
Is it not ironic that someone who masquerades as a prophet of the so-called downtrodden ghetto youths is living a fabulous life and making a decent fortune from the same environment he considers wretched?
It seems to have succeeded in sowing disunity rather than cultivating unity.
Food for thought!
Matthew 7: 16-20 tells us, "By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them."
But Bishop Lazi does not give a hoot about what the naïve young man does with his life or sings about — nothing will turn on it — but would want to draw your attention to the hybridisation of the asymmetric warfare currently being waged by the West to dislodge the regime in Harare.
Folks, as the elections draw nearer, get ready for a heavy dose of sensational drama, contrived stunts, hyper-active social media websites churning fake news and fiction, fake prophecies and paid pollsters in a desperate and concerted campaign to sway votes in the opposition's favour.
As the Bishop said earlier, the idea is to keep the population, especially the youths, who are widely viewed as kingmakers of this political epoch, sufficiently agitated and riled up enough to vote against the ruling party.
The worst-case scenario is to besmirch and soil the electoral process and elections management body (ZEC) to create grounds for a disputed electoral outcome.
Last year, Government had to take the extraordinary step to force one foreign mission to abandon its plan to sponsor local artistes to further their political objectives, as this was in flagrant breach of Article 41(1) of the Vienna Convention, which enjoins diplomats not to interfere in the internal affairs of the receiving state.
President ED told us as much in his article published in The Sunday Mail on July 17 last year.
"Lately, we have witnessed attempts at interfering in our internal affairs by some Foreign Missions accredited to our country. This worrisome propensity is likely to get even more blatant closer to our harmonised general elections slated for next year, in 2023," he warned.
"Again, we have seen some Missions mobilising our artistes and communicators for partisan political ends. We have had to order one Mission to drop such hideous plans."
It forced one excitable and energetic young Jiti musician who had fallen for the trick to bin his nascent political activism.
Futile
Bishop Lazarus perfectly understands those who claim the political playing field is skewed — against the ruling party.
The decay, rot and wreckage wrought by 23 years of sanctions has become the de facto manifesto of the opposition.
As was intended by the West that conceived them, our wretched conditions born out of sanctions are being conveniently weaponised by being packaged as the fruits of incompetence, mismanagement and corruption.
This is by design rather than default.
But all this will come to naught.
If you have been paying attention, you would have noted that recent statistics from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) indicate that as at May 30, 2022, the country had 5,8 million registered voters compared to 5,6 million in 2007/2008.
The bulk of these voters live in Zanu-PF strongholds, which is unsurprising, as 61,4 percent of Zimbabweans live in rural areas.
It gets even grimmer.
In the six provinces in which Zanu-PF almost had a clean sweep in the 2018 elections — Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Masvingo, Midlands and Matabeleland South— there are more than 3,5 million voters.
To put this into perspective, Zanu-PF claimed 57 of the 62 constituencies that were contested in the Mashonaland provinces in 2018, while it won 25 of 26 in Masvingo, 12 of 13 in Mat South and 22 of the 27 seats on offer in the Midlands province.
In also dominated in other provinces, except Harare and Bulawayo, where it, however, witnessed resurgent support.
Numbers do not lie!
It would take a statistical miracle for the opposition to wrest power from a political behemoth that performed satisfactorily even at a time when it was undergoing a profound political transition.
In the coming weeks, the Bishop will be sharing with you cold, hard facts of why the 2023 elections will likely be calamitous for the opposition.
Writing recently for "The Conversation", a network of not-for-profit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, Blessing-Miles Tendi, an associate professor of African Politics at Oxford University, sounded what could be described as an eerie warning.
"The future of opposition politics is also on the ballot. Since 2018, the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party has had to contend with internal splits and underfunding.
In the intervening years, it has failed to get large numbers of new voters onto the electoral register.
"If the ruling Zanu-PF party pulls off the overwhelming election victory it is working towards, it is likely that the opposition will be further saddled with division and disillusionment, posing an existential threat to the kind of vibrant opposition politics led by the MDC in the past two decades."
The writing is obviously on the bright yellow wall.
Bishop out!
Source - The Sunday Mail
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