Mujuru is like a foul mouthed old lady who curses nonstop but come the storm clutch the Bible

Zimbabwe is a nation ruled by fear. It was fear that had VP Mujuru reaching for her Bible over the weekend and talk of peace. She has been an active member of the Salvation Army but this weekend she was quoting from the Bible extensively with seriousness, urgency and earnest few had never seen in her. Some people are capable of that dipolar behaviour.

In my village there was this old lady, vaMujeke, who could curse and swear in the foulest language I have ever heard in my whole life. She would remonstrate her displeasure by flashing her naked behind in the direction or face of whoever had annoyed her. She was the Sheila Mutsenhu, the Zanu PF activist who stripped down to her bra and knickers before the US Ambassador to protest the sanctions, of her time. It did not take much to get her running full throttle and forming at the mouth cursing and swearing and once in full flow she would go on for hours. The one thing that stopped her dead in full flow was lightening.
There was nothing like the clap of lightening to shut up vaMujeke and send her scouring for somewhere to hide. On one occasion she happened to be wearing a red head scarf, a bad colour that 'attracted' lightening; she whip it off her head and hid it in the nearest place she could find which happened to be a clay-pot. The home owner was not amused to find a dirty head scarf in their culture milk. She was also known to put out the fire with whatever she found handy. I went to bed hungry one night when she happened to seek shelter in our home.

As the storm progress one could hear her mumbling something, the closer and louder the lightening clap the louder her mumbled. It was something religious; you could hear Jesus and God in the mumbling. At her home, it is said she would clutching the Bible.  

Fear has turned VP Mujuru to the holy book with vaMujeke's zeal! She talked of fear and nothing else.

Mujuru said the Church was there to help people live peacefully together and to mould God-fearing citizens.

She also said that people should generally not be afraid of the living, but of the All Mighty God, who saw everything that took place under the sun.

"Ndozvatauyira pano kuti tidzorwe munzira dzedu dzisinakururama, tidzorwe mukuita kwedu, mumatauriro, mafambiro nemagariro edu, pavepo nerugare munyika yedu yakafirwa, yakasunungurwa nevapenyu nevakaenda, tibatsire vatungamiriri vedu kuti runyararo rwuripo rwuve runyararo rwechokwadi (We are here for this Church gathering to be guided by God and the Church so that we behave ourselves, speak well and live well, so that there will be peace in the country that many people sacrificed their lives for)," said Mujuru.

 "We cannot respect a God we have not seen when we cannot respect each other. We were created in his own image. It delights the Lord to see his people living in peace."

Peace what peace, madam?

For 34 years since independence the one thing Zimbabwe has yarned for but was denied is peace, justice and human dignity. This corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF dictatorship has left millions economically destitute and has terrorized the people denying them a meaningful say in the governance of the country and even the right to life itself. The regime has murdered over 30 000 innocent people in its 34 years in power. VP Mujuru as a senior member of the regime has done nothing to end the corruption and oppression. Indeed she is a chief instigator and beneficiary of some of the corruption and looting that has been going on.

Last November she went one step further than the Zanu PF modus operandi of pretending there was no corruption and no political oppression and that the country's economic problems were all caused by the "illegitimate sanctions imposed by the evil West". She publicly denied the stories of rampant corruption in parastatals like PSMAS and denounced those who had uncovered the stories as agents of regime change. To a long suffering Zimbabwean public, the victims of the rampant corruption, she might just as well have spit in our faces and flashed her naked behind, vaMujeke style.

The on-going factional fighting in Zanu PF of the last few months has seen VP Mujuru being hunted down like an animal by her former Zanu PF colleagues in the fight for power. The storm has been gathering pace and she is frightened out of her wits and she is now feverishly turning to the Bible and praying for peace.

I would like to believe that God is not so easily fooled by cynical people like vaMujeke or VP Mujuru who treat his key commandment to "treat others as we would want them to treat you" with the uttermost contempt but only to become super religious when the lightning storm  approach.