Of Mumba, Tshabangu and a British oilman

Is that time of the year again when Bishop Lazi takes a sabbatical and retreats to the mountain to thank God for the abundance of life in the year gone by and pray for good tidings in the new year. has bountiful export opportunities for Zimbabwe, buoyed b

PHEW! What a year 2023 has been! One did not have to be a seer to predict that the August 23-24 harmonised elections were always going to be the sun around which all our lives were going to revolve.

Every time Zimbabwe holds elections, it is prudent to budget for the unthinkable, for our polls always present those who consider themselves our adversaries with that once-ina-blue-moon opportunity to radically change our politics by effecting regime change.

Well, this year, they gave us an overweening, but naive Zambian called Nevers Mumba and a political pauper now turned prince in opposition politics called Sengezo Tshabangu.

Those who were closely following Bishop Lazarus would remember that he prophesied three distinct outcomes of the 2023 elections — the inexorable death of Douglas Mwonzora’s MDC; the beginning of the end of Nelson Chamisa’s fledgling pet political project, CCC; and confirmation of ZANU PF’s pre-eminence as a dominant force in local politics.

This has all come to pass.

A country of consequence

You see, it is ill-advised and fatal to ignore the painful and tortuous history that birthed this teapot-shaped Republic we call Zimbabwe.

It is a country of consequence, forged in the crucible of the liberation struggle, which will always be an enduring covenant — sealed with blood — between past and future generations of this sacred land.

The liberation struggle essentially symbolises the dogged tenacity to defend our land even by blood, the ability to take on and prevail over even the most daunting of adversaries and the triumph of good over evil.

We are still at war. It never ended. It continues.

It has just evolved and changed terrain to asymmetrical warfare, which is subtler but potent, nevertheless.

This year, the enemy changed tack and decided to use the Southern African Development

DURING the Intra-Africa Trade Fair (IATF), held recently in Cairo, Egypt, participating Zimbabwean companies were exposed to the growing demand for diversified local products across the continent in sectors such as processed foods, agricultural inputs and implements, construction and engineering, leather and leather products, horticulture and essential oils.

The IATF, which is Africa’s largest trade fair, also presented a unique window for Zimbabwe to understand the market of the host country, Egypt, and identify opportunities local companies can tap into.

Egypt’s market has been growing over the past few years, with statistics showing that the African continent has been failing to meet demand there.

However, during the first Zimbabwe-Egypt Business Forum — organised by ZimTrade on the sidelines of IATF — some of the leading distributors in the market confirmed they are prepared to source from Zimbabwe if local producers can offer high quality products at fair prices.

According to Trade Map, Egypt’s total

Community (SADC) as a battering ram to try to prise open our defences and expose us to a catastrophic frontal assault.

The deployment of Mumba — a bellicose ex-convict — as head of the SADC Electoral Observation Mission to Zimbabwe stank to high heaven.

But being as ever vigilant as we always are, we could smell trouble from a mile away.

Mumba needed to heed President ED’s pointed exhortation before the polls for observers to stick to their lane.

If anything, the repeated warnings should have told him that Harare had knowledge of the plot that was simmering behind the scenes.

The region knew as well.

And when the plan unfolded as expected, it was successfully blunted, and the plotters were publicly named and shamed.

The nuisance Mumba had to retreat to the shadows from whence he came.

That we have since forgotten about this vile and venal man, just four short months after our plebiscite, shows how he was emphatically vanquished.

But it is just crass naivete, if not rank desperation, to even think that Mumba’s plot to put his finger on the scale and tilt the election in favour of the opposition had the remotest chance of success.

It did not.

It was a mission akin to flogging a dead horse.

Those of us who know Chamisa well were aware that he was going to wreck the opposition in the same way he, as then organising secretary of the MDC-T, wrecked Morgan Tsvangirai’s political campaign in 2013, when he claimed God had told him his leader was going to win and, therefore, did not have to overexert himself in campaigning.

It ended in tears.

After their chastising defeat, the unravelling in the opposition began, as a rebellion brewed within its ranks, which culminated in its acrimonious split(s).

We have come full circle again, especially after CCC’s shellacking in this year’s elections.

Their campaign was doomed from the outset.

The farcical candidate-selection process before the polls — whose major highlight was the “bereka-mwana” contest, where a potential candidates’ followers would queue behind them to determine who had the most numbers (Kikikiki) — only betrayed Chamisa’s

wretched leadership style.

But getting the most followers did not guarantee success, as the ultimate winner was determined by a clique in Harare after an inscrutable vetting process.

Those who questioned the integrity and wisdom behind the selection process were dismissed as ZANU PF agents, silenced and ostracised.

These apparent fault lines were always going to widen after CCC’s inevitable defeat in the polls.

Inevitable because the opposition had a snowball’s chance in hell to wrest the crucial Mashonaland provinces, Midlands and Masvingo from ZANU PF, whose swashbuckling political campaign was evidence enough of the ruling party’s resurgence, which is being powered by the country’s economic renaissance under ED’s leadership.

And the unravelling in CCC has already begun.

Tshabangu, who claims to be the party’s interim secretary-general, is doubtlessly a living example of the folly of the “wapusa wapusa” style of politics invented by Chamisa.

In his November 4 judgment, High Court judge Justice Munamato Mutevedzi aptly and succinctly summed up the disease that currently afflicts the opposition.

“A political party which does not have constitutive documents to make reference to opens itself up to the vagaries of inclement political weather,” he said.

“There possibly could be nothing to stop any member of such an institution from successfully claiming any position in it.”

So, essentially, Tshabangu is a grotesque Frankensteinian political monster that has been conjured by Chamisa’s puerile ineptitude, callowness and fantastical delusions.

Tshabangu becomes a political pauper that has become prince, while Chamisa has proved he is no Einstein but a Frankenstein. Kikikiki.

You can see that Tshabangu is now enjoying the rockstar status that comes with his new-found fame and possibly fortune.

Clearly, there is nothing that can now stop him from getting his hands on that largesse that would be doled out as proceeds guaranteed under the Political Parties Finance Act.

It would potentially deal a deathly blow to Chamisa and his clique.

This is probably what Welshman Ncube meant when he posted on X on Friday that

“the laws of unintended consequences are harsh, cruel and unforgiving”.

And ZANU PF is enjoying every bit of this spectacle; it will even profit from it.

Micah 9 verse 5 says: “Your hand will be lifted up in triumph over your enemies, and all your foes will be destroyed.”

In Isaiah 54:16-17, the Lord assures us: “See, it is I who created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges a weapon fit for its work.

And it is I who have created the destroyer to wreak havoc; no weapon forged against you will prevail, you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me.”

Return of the British oilman

But ED is not distracted by these sideshows. He remains laser-focused on his mission to create a modern and prosperous Zimbabwe, and he is winning.

His stars are lining up.

The announcement of a gas find in Muzarabani last week would only put wind in his sails, as it does not only add a feel-good factor, but an assurance that our grand plans would materialise.

The Bishop told you before that declaration of a commercial gas find was only a matter of time.

The signs were already there; not least the return of British oligarch Algy Cluff, who once had a stake in the Freda Rebecca gold mine before selling off his investments some time in 1996?

He was once a close friend of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, together with her husband Denis, were the guest of honour when Cluff opened Freda Rebecca gold mine in 1989.

Cluff, the English oilman, who was one of the first to drill for oil in the North Sea, has since tip-toed his way back by supporting the oil exploration company’s well exploration exercise. He is reportedly angling for a 25 percent stake in the project.

His decades-long experience means he is privy to information that some of us already knew. He is but an example of the renewed interest by investors in the new Zimbabwean story.

Our minerals will indeed be our salvation. One does not have to look any further than our performance in the past year, despite the vicissitudes of an increasingly uncertain global outlook.

While most so-called experts expected our revenues to drop, owing to declining commodity prices and slowing global demand, our exports in the first nine months of the year rose to US$7,3 billion, compared to US$7 billion in the same period a year earlier.

This has largely been driven by higher lithium and diamond exports.

Overall, this year’s projected economic growth has been revised upwards to 5,5 percent, which is more than the regional average.

So, notwithstanding the expected unseasonably low rains, which might dent forecast output in agriculture, the impact of rising production from new projects in lithium (Sabi Star Mine, Zulu Lithium and Prospect Lithium), as well as the Manhize steel plant, among others, will give us a huge lift, helping to add impetus to our drive towards Vision 2030.

A new exciting year awaits us.

All we must do is believe and trust the process.

Bishop out!