Opinion / Columnist
Zanu-PF membership a right for some, Cdes
12 Mar 2015 at 10:09hrs | Views
CABINET FILES AND CZ's NOTEBOOK
Dear Cabinet and
Politburo members
COMRADES, like I said at the weekend, we should not be losing sleep over the frivolous court challenge being mounted by Didymus & Co against their self-expulsion from the great revolutionary party. This is not a case that the courts should be wasting time on in the first place because those people simply dismissed themselves from the party.
Apart from the fact that the fools decided to rush to the courts before even exhausting the party's internal dispute resolution (and appeal) channels, the courts have no legal jurisdiction to decide who should be a member of a voluntary membership organisation like our party. Zanu-PF is a peoples' movement and only the people can decide who stays and who goes. And in this case the people spoke so resoundingly. So who should try to over-rule their verdict?
Why do Didymus, Rugare and those other fools think they are so special? They are not the first people to be dismissed from the party and they will certainly not be the last, so why should they think being a member of Zanu-PF is their God-given right?
So many people were dismissed from the party, and not even one of them was rude enough to drag the party to the courts. Many including vanaSithole, vanaTekere, vanaNkala, vanaMakoni and all the wayward lot. Vanhu vairasa gwara remusangano. Even our own Cde Jonah. But none of them were as half dull as we are seeing in this case.
Okay, suppose we have time to waste, and we ask the group to mobilise as many of their purported supporters as possible to gather, say at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield, and we organise our own supporters to simultaneously gather at another venue far away, say at the National Sports Stadium, can they get even 50 people in a week? They will be very lucky to have their own wives and children turning up at their own venue. Many people make a big mistake of thinking they can become more popular than the party that made them what they are. Well, some people do not learn.
The fact that we have had people like these in government for a long time explains why our programmes have not been very successful.
Anyway, let us focus on things that matter.
Kindest Regards
Yours Sincerely
ME
… AND NOW TO THE NOTEBOOK
Really
The State media this week made us to believe that efforts of some sort are underway to whittle down the number of legislators, statutory commission staff and other hangers-on who are bleeding Treasury virtually dry.
This is very curious because a majority of these positions were only created recently despite a public outcry that this country was just too small to sustain such a number of workers. No one listened, and hardly two years after the new Constitution, which brought about all these extra posts, government officials are admitting that the wage bill is not sustainable.
Anyway, if it is indeed true that the government is struggling with its bloated expenses, we might as well ask what could have happened to those 75 000 ghost workers in the civil service that were unearthed by an audit a few years ago.
Forget
We are made to understand that the Grain Millers Association of Zimbabwe is preparing to challenge the Minister of Agriculture Cde Joseph Made's decision setting the so-called "producer price" for maize at just a shade under US$400 when the regional average is US$220. We remember the same outfit doing the same last year and the year before and before but we have never got to know what becomes of it. The truth of the matter is that no one will listen to them because the maize importation for resale to the Grain Marketing Board is a business more lucrative than actual farming. So their association should simply forget and smile.
Records
Zimbabwe is such a lovely place. This week Zimbos woke up to another colourful phrase. Naked nonsense! At the weekend Gokwe Nembudziya legislator Cde Justice "Mayor" Wadyajena made a silly suggestion that schoolchildren should be given Zanu-PF membership cards, prompting the Information Minister Cde Jonathan Moyo to dismiss the infantile suggestion on the social media as "naked nonsense".
"Why do you worry too much about naked nonsense? Moyo asked his followers.
"Comrades, (a) Zanu-PF card is voluntary to signify membership of the party," he said. "Let's leave kids out of this."
Zimbabwe has always been wondrously endowed with citizens who always have something witty for almost every situation.
Dr CZ remembers that some years ago when first asked about some scandalous allegations that were being levelled against him by one Jefta Dube, the late president of Zimbabwe, the Reverend Canaan Sodindo Banana dismissed them as "a mortuary of lies!"
In 1986, the late David Karimanzira, then minister of youth, did not hesitate to remind visiting former American president Jimmy Carter that "American policy toward South Africa is devoid of the milk of human kindness. What we have heard is platitudes and apologies only for apartheid South Africa.
The late Herbert Ushewokunze had previously stood up in Parliament to interject when (outgoing) home affairs minster Joshua Nkomo (the late) was giving details of what he said were wanton killings in the western parts of the country, to tell the august House "this man deserves a Nobel Prize in fiction!"
Joshua Nkomo himself had sardonically described the trio of Ndabaningi Sithole, Chief Chirau and Abel Muzorewa as "Blacksmiths" after they had agreed to work with the late Ian Smith in the doomed 1978 internal settlement deal.
During the 1979 Lancaster House talks (where Dr CZ was also a plenipotentiary delegate!) when Lord Carrington tried to arm-twist the dilly-dallying Zanu wing of the Patriotic Front to sign the peace treaty by imposing a deadline, the Robert Mugabe-led side responded through a statement read by its lawyer, the late Dr Eddison Zvobgo: "Carrington can go to hell. Thatcher can jump in the Thames. Furthermore, Thatcher is in concubinage with Satan Botha!"
Tempted
The temptation is just riveting. We are referring to the temptation that Dr CZ is facing as regards his former party Zanu-PF. The temptation to re-join the party is just getting too much if what we are reading in the media is anything to go by, plus much, much more. Apart from the many vacancies that have been created by the on going clean-up — which might soon see hardworking fellows like Dr CZ getting three or four positions uncontested — there is something else that makes Shake Shake Building especially more attractive. If former Zanu-PF secretary for administration Cde Didymus Mutasa is still to be trusted, he claims that when he dismissed himself from the party, it had a cool US$17 million sleeping in its CBZ account. So who was it that was spreading those malicious rumours that the party is in the red, workers have gone for months without pay, blah, blah? The other good reason to re-join the party are reports that the party has finally been able to "liberate" those seedy hostels in Mbare. Shawasha, Matererini, Nenyere blah, blah. Media reports suggest that the party mandarins have successfully managed to browbeat Harare city fathers into slashing rentals at those slums from US$65 per month to just US$10. This is just as good as free! It looks like the party is finally delivering on the promises it made!
Dr CZ has been to Maputo several times. Most buildings in the old city were generously liberated by Frelimo cadres arriving from the war and they have been staying in there for free ever since. As a result it is also not surprising that these buildings are also free of running water, free of functional toilets, free of electricity, free of window panes, free of anything that any decent dwelling should have. We see that type of freedom happening soon to those buildings in Mbare.
In Kenya there is a wonderful slum on the outskirts of Nairobi that is called Kibera. It is one of that country's most prominent tourist attractions. Who knows, with our diamond find reportedly disappearing, Zimbabwe's next foreign currency windfall could be pre-destined to come from tourists stampeding to see Mbare before they die.
cznotebook@yahoo.co.uk
Dear Cabinet and
Politburo members
COMRADES, like I said at the weekend, we should not be losing sleep over the frivolous court challenge being mounted by Didymus & Co against their self-expulsion from the great revolutionary party. This is not a case that the courts should be wasting time on in the first place because those people simply dismissed themselves from the party.
Apart from the fact that the fools decided to rush to the courts before even exhausting the party's internal dispute resolution (and appeal) channels, the courts have no legal jurisdiction to decide who should be a member of a voluntary membership organisation like our party. Zanu-PF is a peoples' movement and only the people can decide who stays and who goes. And in this case the people spoke so resoundingly. So who should try to over-rule their verdict?
Why do Didymus, Rugare and those other fools think they are so special? They are not the first people to be dismissed from the party and they will certainly not be the last, so why should they think being a member of Zanu-PF is their God-given right?
So many people were dismissed from the party, and not even one of them was rude enough to drag the party to the courts. Many including vanaSithole, vanaTekere, vanaNkala, vanaMakoni and all the wayward lot. Vanhu vairasa gwara remusangano. Even our own Cde Jonah. But none of them were as half dull as we are seeing in this case.
Okay, suppose we have time to waste, and we ask the group to mobilise as many of their purported supporters as possible to gather, say at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield, and we organise our own supporters to simultaneously gather at another venue far away, say at the National Sports Stadium, can they get even 50 people in a week? They will be very lucky to have their own wives and children turning up at their own venue. Many people make a big mistake of thinking they can become more popular than the party that made them what they are. Well, some people do not learn.
The fact that we have had people like these in government for a long time explains why our programmes have not been very successful.
Anyway, let us focus on things that matter.
Kindest Regards
Yours Sincerely
ME
… AND NOW TO THE NOTEBOOK
Really
The State media this week made us to believe that efforts of some sort are underway to whittle down the number of legislators, statutory commission staff and other hangers-on who are bleeding Treasury virtually dry.
This is very curious because a majority of these positions were only created recently despite a public outcry that this country was just too small to sustain such a number of workers. No one listened, and hardly two years after the new Constitution, which brought about all these extra posts, government officials are admitting that the wage bill is not sustainable.
Anyway, if it is indeed true that the government is struggling with its bloated expenses, we might as well ask what could have happened to those 75 000 ghost workers in the civil service that were unearthed by an audit a few years ago.
We are made to understand that the Grain Millers Association of Zimbabwe is preparing to challenge the Minister of Agriculture Cde Joseph Made's decision setting the so-called "producer price" for maize at just a shade under US$400 when the regional average is US$220. We remember the same outfit doing the same last year and the year before and before but we have never got to know what becomes of it. The truth of the matter is that no one will listen to them because the maize importation for resale to the Grain Marketing Board is a business more lucrative than actual farming. So their association should simply forget and smile.
Records
Zimbabwe is such a lovely place. This week Zimbos woke up to another colourful phrase. Naked nonsense! At the weekend Gokwe Nembudziya legislator Cde Justice "Mayor" Wadyajena made a silly suggestion that schoolchildren should be given Zanu-PF membership cards, prompting the Information Minister Cde Jonathan Moyo to dismiss the infantile suggestion on the social media as "naked nonsense".
"Why do you worry too much about naked nonsense? Moyo asked his followers.
"Comrades, (a) Zanu-PF card is voluntary to signify membership of the party," he said. "Let's leave kids out of this."
Zimbabwe has always been wondrously endowed with citizens who always have something witty for almost every situation.
Dr CZ remembers that some years ago when first asked about some scandalous allegations that were being levelled against him by one Jefta Dube, the late president of Zimbabwe, the Reverend Canaan Sodindo Banana dismissed them as "a mortuary of lies!"
In 1986, the late David Karimanzira, then minister of youth, did not hesitate to remind visiting former American president Jimmy Carter that "American policy toward South Africa is devoid of the milk of human kindness. What we have heard is platitudes and apologies only for apartheid South Africa.
The late Herbert Ushewokunze had previously stood up in Parliament to interject when (outgoing) home affairs minster Joshua Nkomo (the late) was giving details of what he said were wanton killings in the western parts of the country, to tell the august House "this man deserves a Nobel Prize in fiction!"
Joshua Nkomo himself had sardonically described the trio of Ndabaningi Sithole, Chief Chirau and Abel Muzorewa as "Blacksmiths" after they had agreed to work with the late Ian Smith in the doomed 1978 internal settlement deal.
During the 1979 Lancaster House talks (where Dr CZ was also a plenipotentiary delegate!) when Lord Carrington tried to arm-twist the dilly-dallying Zanu wing of the Patriotic Front to sign the peace treaty by imposing a deadline, the Robert Mugabe-led side responded through a statement read by its lawyer, the late Dr Eddison Zvobgo: "Carrington can go to hell. Thatcher can jump in the Thames. Furthermore, Thatcher is in concubinage with Satan Botha!"
Tempted
The temptation is just riveting. We are referring to the temptation that Dr CZ is facing as regards his former party Zanu-PF. The temptation to re-join the party is just getting too much if what we are reading in the media is anything to go by, plus much, much more. Apart from the many vacancies that have been created by the on going clean-up — which might soon see hardworking fellows like Dr CZ getting three or four positions uncontested — there is something else that makes Shake Shake Building especially more attractive. If former Zanu-PF secretary for administration Cde Didymus Mutasa is still to be trusted, he claims that when he dismissed himself from the party, it had a cool US$17 million sleeping in its CBZ account. So who was it that was spreading those malicious rumours that the party is in the red, workers have gone for months without pay, blah, blah? The other good reason to re-join the party are reports that the party has finally been able to "liberate" those seedy hostels in Mbare. Shawasha, Matererini, Nenyere blah, blah. Media reports suggest that the party mandarins have successfully managed to browbeat Harare city fathers into slashing rentals at those slums from US$65 per month to just US$10. This is just as good as free! It looks like the party is finally delivering on the promises it made!
Dr CZ has been to Maputo several times. Most buildings in the old city were generously liberated by Frelimo cadres arriving from the war and they have been staying in there for free ever since. As a result it is also not surprising that these buildings are also free of running water, free of functional toilets, free of electricity, free of window panes, free of anything that any decent dwelling should have. We see that type of freedom happening soon to those buildings in Mbare.
In Kenya there is a wonderful slum on the outskirts of Nairobi that is called Kibera. It is one of that country's most prominent tourist attractions. Who knows, with our diamond find reportedly disappearing, Zimbabwe's next foreign currency windfall could be pre-destined to come from tourists stampeding to see Mbare before they die.
cznotebook@yahoo.co.uk
Source - fingaz
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