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Goodbye Mister Boris Johnson
IT was bound to happen, and sooner especially after the latest vote of no confidence. In office, Boris Johnson was one head on whom the crown sat so unseemly, so oddly. Hair unkempt, his leadership style was no less shrivelled, untidy, which is why today he goes down in British history as a prime minister the Isle least deserved, and took too long to shed.
And once he forcibly thrust himself on the world stage, thanks to the conflict in Eastern Europe, he made a true lie of claims to subtlety which Albion routinely got from its ravished poets of yore. Typically, the firstlings of his mouth became the firstlings of his mind, to invert Shakespeare’s often misquoted phrase.
Two Clowns of a kind
The riotous gigs he held at Number 10 Downing Street proved an apt summary of his reign: frenetically dissolute, intensely chaotic and riotous.
The duplicity he served Albion, became some remarkable plough-back to a civilisation which raised him, a civilisation whose scriptural pretences never quite burnished its utter lack of inner morals.
Where Johnson exceeded that civilisation, culture and society, was in his dogged bid to extend his own lease of political life long beyond its lifetime.
Ukraine came in handy, or so he thought, as a giver of a long life after. It became a jingoistic red-herring by which he hoped to keep Albion both placated and distracted. And in Zelensky, that leader of the ill-fated East European Nation, Boris had found a kindred comic character and spirit.
The two would dance in step, blend beautifully, if only the pantomime they acted in was not one of human carnage.
Ukraine has lost many of her fine sons and daughters to Boris’ bizarre cheer.
It has and continues to reduce to rubble, the glory and monumental edifices it inherited from the now defunct Soviet Union.
Living beyond their lifetime
Kindred spirits, the two were. Together they struggled and fought viciously to live beyond their lifetime! One battled to prolong a life and career abridged by political moral turpitude; the other battled a life abridged by sheer folly which spurred him into chasing a cause without any creed.
As fate has since ruled, seemingly with grave cynicism, immorality abridges political life faster than an unwinnable war! Boris is now gone, well, almost; Zelensky continues down the path of rhetorical flourish, as more and more Ukrainians fall cold in the battlefield.
Fate, it would seem, cynically kills off the morally wicked faster, while sparing those whose career is kneading grim verse out of a grim war.
When polar opposites are united
What I had not budgeted for was the contempt for Johnson which has united friend and foe. While Johnson was still folding his valedictory speech from Number 10 Downing Street, the European Union and Russia — two polar opposites on the value and ideological scale — were knitted in raucous laughter, before separately toasting to Johnson’s anxiously awaited departure.
To imagine that two sub-continents, so long and bitterly divided by creed and war, would find themselves on one side in one bay, jeering the defeat of the same hated team, was one twist of history which neither reason nor rhyme can ever explain. Yet it happened.
And both shared a common belief, albeit from different reasoning ends, that a world without a Johnson certainly bodes much better for humanity!
Even the hoary Theresa May, and surly John Major, shook age into a happy dance. I am convinced Johnson is one person with unrivalled claim to hearing, reading and watching his obituary in the prime of his life!
Defying gravity in free fall
Picture this: the ex-British Premier lost over 50 ministers in under two, very short days, as these resigned, singly and severally, each giving some mordant missive justifying his or her resignation. In sum, the colourful missives became a damning window to Johnson, the scion of the Ottoman Empire raised abroad.
The mighty State of Albion which once ruled the waves, shrank and became utterly and remarkably dysfunctional; an exquisitely failed State hard to find a parallel in human history.
Bad for England; worse for himself
Still the man hoped to outlive this great perturbation! And to repair it through fresh appointments, more than 20 fresh, substantive ministerial appointments, all told! As it turned out, all but one of Johnson’s prospective appointees turned down his ministerial offers.
The one who obliged – an Iraq-born tipped to be Chancellor of the Exchequer — did so in order to be near enough to Boris’ back so he would drive home the dagger that would truly retire the senselessly doughty megalomaniac. As we now know, this kind Iraqi-born businessman is among the front-runners for the premiership. Johnson was bad for Britain; he was worse for himself!
Dearth of leadership
We wait to see how the sons of Albion will put their affairs right. But the lot currently in the running to replace Johnson, make this a very remote and even grim prospect.
There isn’t any among this whole lot, good enough to lift heart and hope. We even have one who hopes to be elected, certainly to govern, without the wherewithal for political contest. England is in the age of experimentation, itself a clear indication of dearth of leadership.
Fumes of Victorian Grandeur
And all at a time such as this? The British economy is in a mess.
The chickens of Brexit folly are now coming home to roost. Much worse, 21st Century Britain still feigns itself a Victorian global power it once was, more than a whole century after this glory expired.
We all know Johnson himself was a personification of that bygone glory, and of course the decadence it begets. Like the country he misruled, Johnson fancied himself a Winston Churchill: that knight of the Empire who also became a drunk, dubious commander of Britain during the Second European War.
We, too, also know why Johnson wanted a Great War to complete his Churchillian mime.
Thankfully, unlike Churchill, he found a good fool and a pawn, and thus did not have to expend precious British lives in a senseless war, of course beyond a handful of mercenaries already killed or captured by the Russians.
The Sun now forever set
Will Britain recover? Frankly one wonders. Much rests on its readiness to embrace and be embraced back by its crib: Europe from which it exited in a fit of mass irrationality. Much, too, rests on its readiness to leave this self-ruinous path of bellicosity against Russia.
The war in Ukraine is unwinnable. Let me put it more accurately: it is one war Russia cannot afford to lose. When a people, let alone a superpower, defines a conflict as existential, anything goes. This the British, Americans and Europeans appear reluctant to accept.
Third and last, much rests on a United Kingdom which is ready to revise its role, place and expectations in global affairs. The recent CHOGM in Rwanda scored home the grim reality that Britain can no longer reorder the world, including its former colonies, however pliant or polite.
If anything, Rwanda became a lull before stormy politics which flung Johnson into the vortex. Rwanda, too, may very well have written an epitaph for Monarchical England.
Instead of regal glory, the main story was a suitcase full of notes, and how all that besmirched Albion’s honour. The sun has set, forever!
Roasting Professor
The week that’s gone by saw Triple C getting roasted brown by Professor Jonathan Moyo.
The “bad” Professor kept the mopani fire well stoked. He deftly wielded his fraying fork, all the time turning chunks of Triple C until they turned rich, sumptuous, succulent and edible brown.
In the end, Chamisa, the leader of Triple C, had to sue for some peace that was not forthcoming.
The Professor was unrelenting, reinforced by one Kudzai who, in feigned coyness, lacerated Chamisa’s spokesperson, one Fadzai Mahere.
Given the allegations which were being levelled against her – I will not aggravate matters for her by repeating them here – one got the sense her first name was itself a great foreboding. What’s not in a name?
Three great points Triple C can’t wish away
Yet beneath these salacious allegations, quite some serious matter was being raised, however distracting the Professor’s innuendos and sarcasm might have been. He made three great points which Triple C can never wish or rationalise away.
One, Triple C does not have a constitution. Two, Triple C does not have structures that make it a party. Three, Triple C does not have a leadership validated through internal democratic processes as beseems claimants to democracy.
All the way! I can’t say from top to bottom as that would suggest a structure, a leadership neither of which Triple C has! These were the points the Professor made, in the process delegitimising any bid for public office by Triple C.
Beyond formal purpose of leadership
To good measure, the Professor led evidence from other jurisdictions – near to home, too – where political movements have set parameters they have to fulfil in order to be eligible for registration as parties which can bid for office and power.
I happen to know that this is one hell of a proposition which those in charge of affairs of our Nation are giving a serious thought to. As indeed they should.
A leader does a lot more than fulfil formal requirements of incumbency; he also nudges a people, a society, a generation, a Nation in a certain direction that leaves it better and higher than it was when he assumed formal reigns of power. President Mnangagwa has a similar obligation: he must mould an ethos which deepens the democratic ethic in all we do as Zimbabweans, within and between the politics we identify with, or contest against. That’s a transcendental role of a leader for which there is no titled rule book, no lines of force!
The idiocy the ballot cannot sieve
As it is — and this column made that point much earlier — we have a person who pretends to be a leader, and to be at the helm of a crowd he claims merits to be called a political party, yet cannot produce, let alone deposit instruments that validate any of such very tall claims!
His excuse is fear of infiltration by rival parties which, ironically enough, he expects to be formally and democratically constituted presumably for ease of his infiltration of them! It’s crazy.
And as we saw in recent history — closer home in Madagascar, in Liberia; far afield in Pakistan, the United States, United Kingdom and in Ukraine, the ballot has no sieve for collective national idiocy!
We have seen strange characters finding their heads sceptred: from mere deejays, footballers, cricketers, comedians right through to buffoons.
By the time nations realise they have made grave mistakes, it’s already too late, and a whole generation has been ruined!
What is to be done?
Should we ever allow a teenager, riding the crest of a mad crowd to come even as close as to be eligible at all to register as a candidate for whatever level of public office. A teenager riding a wave with no intrinsic connection to him or his personality? Much worse, one wielding a mere crowd with not even a creed, a church or a post office box?
This is a fundamental question we must address seriously as Zimbabweans. Is it not the time for us to consider formal registration of political parties, in the process setting democratic structures which any registrant must either pass or else stumble and trip?
Thank God Zanu-PF is formidably strong, too strong to be shaken by little whirlwinds.
The more reason we must use this precious time to put in train processes that safeguard, grow and protect of democracy and our Republic. Sorry, I should have said ‘your’ democracy and ‘your’ Republic.
In donkey kingdom, both do not concern us. We bray, kick, multiply and munch unguarded pumpkins.
Online Reporter