Suffering exploitation even in death

days.
Today, death is trivialised as it is unprecedentedly politicised and commodified. The recent death of 12-year-old Headlands boy Christpowers in an unfortunate inferno epitomises the magnitude of decadence that has besieged some of our own.

The charred body of the boy was displayed on the social networks with some people making fun out of it. Surprisingly, the father of the deceased, Shepherd Maisiri, seemed to have been excited by the media publicity which he thought was giving him political mileage.
Mr Maisiri misconstrued the media publicity as sympathy. The truth is the media, as usual, wanted to make a killing out of the poor boy’s death.

Ethics were thrown to the wind as the local media jostled for a scoop. Most of them rushed to make conclusions that bordered on political prejudice.
Mr Maisiri himself handled his son’s death in a way that smacked of pure commercialisation. This villager behaved in a way that was tailored to attract undue sympathy and he indeed succeeded as some sympathisers are already constructing decent houses at his homestead.

The hut that Christpowers died in tells a story of a father who did not care very much about his son.
If Maisiri was from my village, he could have been accused of killing his own son for financial and political benefits. Imagine him bragging about the new-found windfall when Christpowers had not even been interred. It leaves us with justifiable speculations that Maisiri attached more value to material possessions than to his son.

Maisiri disgracefully allowed the exploitation of his son’s funeral for political expediency. That was very immoral. That boy deserved a decent send-off, notwithstanding his mental challenge.

The MDC-T and its allies in the media and civil society used the funeral as a platform for politicking. For sacrificing his son, Maisiri is now being rewarded with an uncontested MDC-T ticket to contest in that constituency. If that man can sacrifice his own son, what more of the strangers that he seeks to represent in Parliament?

By blaming the death on Zanu-PF without evidence, MDC-T is stirring up violence as their gullible supporters, who are traditionally vicious, are bound to take vengeance on the perceived murder of Christpowers. The accusations have a potential to cause mayhem in the country. In this regard, it is MDC-T that is more insincere to its commitment to a peaceful election. Even its slogan points to a party that is violent.

Eric Matinenga once suggested a change of the slogan which he noted inflames violence. The intra-party violence within MDC-T is sufficient to show how that party outshines any other party in violence.
Sources from Headlands revealed that after the mishap, three MDC-T officials visited Masisiri and persuaded him to make up a story that fingers Zanu-PF in the death. Maisiri was reportedly assured that this would be the only way for him to accrue financial and political benefits. With the character of Maisiri, anything is possible as long as it brings grist to his mill.

It was a disgrace that Bruce Wharton, an ambassador from a country (US) that prides itself in democracy, could also rush to make irrational conclusions before police investigations were finalised. This man’s behaviour can be understood in the context that he comes from a system that is very good at concocting stories to find justification to attack enemies.

The September 11 catastrophe is widely believed to be an own goal that was meant to find an avenue to invade other sovereign nations under the pretext of hunting terrorists.
Saddam Hussein was accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction and that accusation was used to murder him. Muammar Gaddafi was accused of ill-treating his people and they assisted in his assassination. The accusations were false and were only invented in order to plunder oil in these countries.

The MDC-T plagiarised this wily strategy from the US. The death of Christpowers could be one of such own-goal strategies meant to discredit the inevitable Zanu-PF electoral victory.
This cunning strategy was first used by MDC-T in connivance with the imperialist media in 2002 when a Magunje woman, Brandina Tadyenemhandu, was alleged to have been beheaded by Zanu-PF supporters while her children watched.

The story, which was meant to discredit the poll results, was disproved beyond doubt, forcing the gullible media to retract it.
Now that police have ruled out foul play in the death of Christpowers, it is honourable for MDC-T to apologise as Geoff Nyarota did when his gullibility was exposed in the Magunje story.

On June 22 2012, the tactic was at play again. MDC-T accused Zanu-PF supporters of burning its activist’s hut in Insiza North. However, the Matabeleland South Provincial Joint Implementation and Monitoring Committee (Jomic) ruled out the allegations which had been targeted at smearing Zanu-PF ahead of the Sadc summit in Mozambique.