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Micheal Mhlanga
Zimbabwe’s 2017 November wonder has continued to hold every political enthusiast hostage due to the unending trail of events in the country’s arena of politics.
Conspiracies have continued to flood the country’s public debate space — with lies also taking the centre stage.
Recently, Professor Jonathan Moyo had been declared dead through the social media grapevine until the recent surface of his ghost on our screens.
On Thursday, there he was on BBC being hosted by a celebrated global media guru Zainab Barkawi.
Now that it’s a public fact that Moyo was never “killed”, does this mean that the rumours of his death should be symbolically translated to the death of his career?
Contrary to his so-called famed eloquence and charisma, five minutes into the 30-minute long programme the Professor seemed to be nervous; he was not the authoritative Jonathan we know who once declared on the same platform some time ago that “Mnangagwa will never rule Zimbabwe”.
Jonathan Moyo was visibly shaken and one would wonder by what since he claims to be safe and stable wherever he is hiding.
He was far from the intellect venom-responsive professor whose statements would cripple the best of the media minds any can bring.
From those who know the Professor, straw-manning and heckling an interview have never been his style yet on Thursday he went as far as divagating, droning repetitions and even hijacking the interview into his personal Press statement.
Knowingly that twitter’s outreach is limited to his few thousand followers whom he would chuckle with residual propaganda jokes during his “powerful’ days, he probably was sure that the virility and perception of “serious” matters is greatly limited should he continue or uncontinue with feeds which open up a thread of questions from some of the people he would call “dunderheads” when asked gravely concerning issues.
His appearance on BBC’s Hardtalk whether voluntarily or as a package summates the level of desperation the fundi is in, desperate for attention and missing the silk loins he was now used to. Good life and power is addictive and expulsion is forced rehabilitation.
Having been to the political rehab before, he knows the cravings, the itches when decisions are made without him and the silence of his name in the media, however, this time he doesn’t have the prescription.
BBC became an outlet to display cravings and exposed his high point of “losing it”.
Hunger is a good recipe for confusion
I learnt this in the early years of the millennium when bread and many other necessities were scarce.
The long hours we spent in a queue waiting for bloomers which had replaced standard bread or mealie-meal and even sugar without eating anything drove one to extend their moment of madness.
The jokes we cracked in those long winding and unsure queues ended up becoming blunt, what we colloquially call “iz’dindi”. At times one would laugh alone at his joke, mindless that the recipients are still waiting for the funny part.
This is the case and curse of Jonathan Moyo on that television screening. He was convinced that he was persuasive and directly responsive in his misfired appearance only to become agitated by his weakness which led to his hiding.
He assures me that I should never believe him when he claims that SAS snipers sprayed bullets at his house when he had already escaped to Saviour Kasukuwere’s house at 2.30 am.
He confusedly claims that Saviour Kasukuwere’s house was shot at for 15 minutes at the exact time. So to the candid professor, whoever told him of the possible attack didn’t tell him that Saviour’s house was also a target?
Why would he, alone, be the G40 target, excluding Kasukuwere? Why would you run and hide at another target’s house?
And after the 15 minutes of gunfire, suddenly it stopped and they were brave to come out and “legally” escape? Someone please linguistically and legally break this down for me, how does one “legally escape”, are there laws in a country that facilitate escape of people?
Something does not add up.
Moreover, his “acquittal” was not legal except “captured” statements by a woman who was scaring anyone and anything in her way of capturing power.
It is not enough to declare a suspect’s innocence by referring to his potbelly or his “young age” in Bindura.
When did a rally in Bindura become a court of law and when do wives of presidents become oath sworn interpreters of the law?
We are still perturbed by how some respected man and women were “undressed” in front of millions only in the name of fermenting a crude political culture of protecting “your boys”.
So the professor has a case to answer and in his interview he evaded the question, he refrained from declaring whether he is innocent on the Zimdef issue or not.
Employing the phrase “illegitimate government” and tirelessly repeating it doesn’t make it true nor does it shift ontologies of current governance, it simply assured the viewers that “kunze kweZanu-PF kunotonhora” (once out of Zanu-PF you will suffer) and the Professor was an exhibit, probably that is the reason he kept on licking his lips.
Chenjerai Hove saw it in 1981
Chenjerai Hove wrote a poem A Masquerade in 1981. In Kadhani and Zimunya’s And Now the Poets speak is yet again a grain of lesson on political thespians we have to be on the lookout for.
In Hove’s rendition, we are warned of those who parade themselves as heroes of a struggle that never was, pretending to be victims with so much knowledge yet they made it all up.
He implores us to be watchful of the virus of instability they are destined to invoke. Let me allow Hove to speak to you as well:
A Masquerade in turmoil
Tossing heaven-bound darkness
On peppered tongues, they came,
They came bound to pretence, to malice,
With home-made head-loads of histories
Distilled in huge stately palaces
Of heroes felt in their head.
Tramps, blessed by archbishops
They came, to spread blessed leprosy
Through soiled habits, aferment.
It was as if Chenjerai had seen Jonathan Moyo then. Indeed literature is a prophet, it tells us what happened and what will happen and renders a free lesson to all who confide in it.
In its wealth, this poem summarises who and what Jonathan Moyo was and is from that interview, “A masquerade” distancing himself from systems he created and actively participated in.
He is no different from the reactionary politicians we saw some past years except that he has experience in it after a stint in 2004-2008 and now he is back in the trenches, only in a different location with self-imposed importance.
One wise man advised me this other day. He said, “Never ever trust Jonathan Moyo. None of his projects ever work or are genuine.
Look at the Ford Foundation and the Wits University scandals and not forgetting the Tsholotsho Declaration.
See how Godfrey Gandawa was pulled into the Zimdef saga together with Fredrick Mandizvidza. See how many young and promising politicians we have lost because of his G40 projects.
It always flops and its the people around him who always suffer, anyone who follows Jonathan Moyo always withers and is burnt in the process. My people, do not be burnt!
Online Reporter