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“THOSE who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”, so goes the saying, which simply means that “one should not criticise others for having the same weaknesses as themselves.”
As the Professor Jonathan Moyo versus Command Agriculture Programme saga continues to unfold, it is interesting to see how the learned professor has become the victim of his own personality traits. They have a name in Sigmund Freud’s theories.
In yesterday’s edition we had the Office of the President and Cabinet weighing in on the claims and counter claims the Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister has been making about Command Agriculture, a demonstration that it is not everybody who buys into his Twitter rants and the numerous stories he feeds the private media.
His interview in The Standard newspaper edition of July 2 to 8, a classic Marechera interviews himself, is a case in point where he attacked the Zimbabwe Defence Forces Commander saying, among other things: “Thankfully, my Twitter feed and books are accessible to rational people in and outside Zimbabwe who know or who can independently tell that Chiwenga’s claim is utter rubbish by a desperate politician in an army uniform.”
Interestingly in one of his books, “The Politics of Administration: Understanding Bureaucracy in Africa,” published by Sapes Books in 1992, Prof Moyo admits to being “(over) zealous”.
In the acknowledgement statement, he writes: “Professor Terry L. Cooper, who served as my advisor in my doctoral studies, was more than one could conventionally expect from a professor.
“His criticism and evaluation of my academic work, which I sometimes did not understand, forced me to deal with important issues which I would have otherwise neglected in my sometimes (over) zealous critique of academic practices.”
He added that he was “particularly grateful to him for helping me to learn to tone down my predilection (weakness) for strong statements; although I still think that I have a long way to go before I can completely kick the habit.”
It is more than three decades since Prof Moyo attained his PhD, but it is now evident that Prof Cooper’s wise counsel fell on deaf ears, and that Prof Moyo has a long way to go before he kicks bad habits.
Why? Because he thinks that he is smarter than all his colleagues in Government. But, stubbornness has its own price.
In the interview, while Prof Moyo gives a gavel-by-gavel account of his so-called “damning criticism of the illegal and corrupt implementation of Command Agriculture”, it probably never occurs to him that he is also running a ministry where so much is happening, and in the public eye too.
We have the ongoing Zimdef graft saga. It’s not a closed chapter because no one is above the law.
In the same vein, it would also be prudent for the relevant parliamentary committees to establish the funding that saw the minister in May this year, lead a high-powered 19-member delegation on a three-week tour of various leading universities across the globe.
The objective: to learn how to incubate industries in line with STEM objectives.
Who paid the bill for the 10 Vice Chancellors from State universities and officials from the ministry that saw them visiting universities in South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Cuba? Is this the norm in the implementation of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics programme?
Then there is narrative about how he joined the liberation struggle. What we read this week was not the first, and neither is it compelling because it contradicts what has been said before.
Who were the major personalities before, during and after he joined the struggle, especially the commanders? There surely are living war veterans who can corroborate or dismiss Prof Moyo’s account.
And, it’s time the Ministry of Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators, Former Political Detainees and Restrictees clarifies the matter not only for today’s readers, but for posterity.
Online Reporter