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SOMETIMES, you have to laugh. Then you remember that this man came within a whisker of taking the reins of our country and you shudder, and thank the gods that he did not.
We have a man going around our country talking to people about how he failed, or better yet, about how he was supposedly robbed.
This man will not stop, it seems, because he can’t, can he? I mean, if he did, what would be his point?
Between fending off those baying for his blood by offering vague promises of “see you in 2016” and these nationwide sob-fests, the man has no other purpose.
From district to district he goes, interspersed with trips to Nigeria to have his demons exorcised and to Oxford to lie about our country to his handlers.
Like a broken record, he repeats his mantra about President Mugabe’s age.
Omitting to call him “President” of course, as if that achieves anything apart from demonstrating his sour grapes.
He means to cover the whole country in this tour or lies. Talk about bolting the stables after the horses have fled. Kuyeuka mhapa iwe wamhanya wakangoti bhenen’ene muchita chevanhu.
So there he is, telling us how he has been to Gutu constituency to lament with his also-runs about their trouncing at the last elections by the revolutionary party.
Only they do not call it that, despite the fact that they know it to be true. I am sure they sat around a fire and shared science fiction tales about mutating ballots and an Israeli irrigation company that installed a drip-drip watering system at the house of Tsvangirai and Khupe.
Well, maybe they did not talk about the latter, for that would cut too close to the bone, but definitely the former. 2018 will not be ‘Nikuved’, they chant.
Presumably his trip to Oxford is also to persuade the authors of the Oxford Dictionary to add that word into the English lexicon.
Fat chance of that happening Mr Tea-boy: while your handlers are happy to pull your strings like a puppet, they do not take instruction from you.
They would not have spoken about their lack of policies of course at this sob-fest in Gutu. Not for this delusional would-be leader to talk about how he misread the electorate and campaigned as if he was in Washington DC to a non-African audience.
Zuma said the other day that he is not in Africa, no wonder why Tsvangson always wanted to go crying to him as Prime Minister, because he suspected that they sing the same tune.
Now we know they only agree in but one thing: Africa is not good. But Zuma drew the line on mutating ballots, I suppose because even for him, from his non-African Johannesburg, even he could not buy the whole Nikuv nonsense.
Alone, Tsvangirai traverses the country to meet little rent-a-crowd gatherings and they tell each other lies about why they have come to this.
They swap falsehoods about how sanctions don’t cause any hardships for our people, yet insist that these should be maintained.
Why insist upon the continued implementation of a sanctions regime that’s not working then?
“You see, sometimes, these people reveal that they in fact believe that we cannot think. Right from their Rhodesian friends’ playbook: the African is too thick to think, so lie, lie and rob their country blind.
From district to district he goes, remembering to update his handlers via Facebook and Twitter.
“We just passed a pothole in Chirumhanzu, and I was touched by how it was let down by the events of July 31, when it’s vote was stolen”, and “we just saw a tree that has failed to sprout leaves this summer and wonder how Mugabe feels about letting this tree down”.
“We went to a funeral today, a 100-year-old woman died of old age, so the Zanu-PF doctor at the Zanu-PF clinic claims, but we suspect the hand of Nikuv in this death, and we will not rest until our country is rid of this problem”.
You get the gist. The equivocations of the persistent rambler, forever wronged, always whining, never five words away from blaming the President for something.
If he had done this merry go round in the rural areas like he is doing now, before the elections, Tsvangirai would have been told in no uncertain terms that our people were not buying that which he was selling.
That our people wanted ownership of their country, and were going to vote for the guy that promised this (and is already delivering, as my rates bill this month shows!), not someone that was happy to see us remain perpetual servants munyika yechipikirwa.
Instead, as has been proved, he went around on a self-congratulatory tour, failing to read the mood in the country, and making a fool of himself.
Now they swap sci-fi tales about Israeli companies and phantom ballots and refuse to smell the coffee.
If you think Nikuv did something to you, and given your penchant to sue at the drop of a hat, why not sue the company already? You know the address, surely?
If you don’t. Pick up one of your drip-drip irrigation pipes, it will have it right there next to where it says “makachinonokera chikoro bambo, nyika inotongwa nevanogona, not any jacanapes that can bark into a microphone”.
Put up, or shut up, the polite would say.
Someone needs to tell this blundering man that the country has moved on.
We have a working Government, ministers carrying out their tasks and election promises being fulfilled (again, have you seen my rates bill this month?).
And all the while, it’s still July 31 this, July 31 that.
Minister Chinamasa came from the IMF the other day with news that the process of re-engaging the international community is underway, on our terms.
Minister Moyo is already making sure that the people are kept informed on the progress of government by making targeted changes in the media.
Minister Nhema is tackling the Indigenisation agenda at full speed, and Minister Chombo has delivered on the promise to give relief to the people through their rates bills.
That is a Government working, and you are still going on about July 31.
This is, of course, the man under whose watch his party went to court with the argument that as July 31 was a Friday and not a Thursday, the election proclamation was invalid!
Talk about elevating mediocrity.
Napoleon said there is a fine line from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there is an even finer one from the ridiculous to the downright myopic.
Which is what you get when you elevate narcissistic tea-boys to positions of power: all hat and no cattle.
And before you suggest that you do have cattle Mr Tsvangson, it means no brains!
So I say, go to Gutu and dream, to Bikita and waffle. Bring your hubris to Chisumbanje and your rank stupidity to Chivi, expose your dunderheadness in Nyajena.
Annoy the good people of Ngundu with your mediocre arguments, and serve your policy piffle in Nembudziya.
Go up and down the highways and byways of our nation’s towns peddling your half-baked policies and fictitious tales.
For the people of Zimbabwe have withstood worse, and come election time in 2018 if you are still around, will reward you with the whirlwind while their votes go to those with sound policies to address their problems.
Carry your lies about Marange diamonds to Oxford and talk to the people at the African Studies Centre.
We know you won’t ask them why they need such a centre since we do not have a European Studies Centre at our own universities.
You will not ask the tough questions about Rhodes and his conspiratorial deception of Lobengula, or the promise to pay reparations that was never kept, the murder of said Lobengula, and the looting of our country to enrich said Rhodes, who just happens to have a Rhodes Centre at the self-same Oxford University.
You will instead be talking about our country, shaming yourself with lies and lies.
I guess the country tour was a kind of practice then.
Here is a suggestion: why not go to Penguin Books and offer them your sci-fi classic on the fantastic mutating ballot?
Yeah?
That’s what I thought: even fiction publishers have limits on what they think might be believable.
Tinomudaishe Chinyoka is former president: University of Zimbabwe Students Union; former president: Zimbabwe National Students Union; former secretary-general: University of Zimbabwe Students Union, and is reading for his PhD in History of Land Law and Political Science, in the UK.
Online Reporter