When the axe-wielding VP axes self from glory
THE big story this week was that, Kembo Mohadi, the man who once chased his wife around the house with an axe, was himself-axed from government.
Of course, he will tell us that he resigned of his own free will. He will say that he suddenly discovered the senses of shame and embarrassment, two concepts obviously foreign to him, and decided to quit. We thank the man for seeing sense. May we have more such men who are honourable enough to resign when shamed. e comrade was confronted with all the evidence and told by his boss to make a decision; stay or go. Of course, being a man who knows what he wants, he decided he would rather drop his job than drop his girls.
Tech aficionado Mohadi
MOHADI’S resignation press statement was a work of art. Firstly, he told the nation that the allegations against him were “muddling the reality of my life as a family man”.
News that he is a family man must have come as a shock to his family, especially his estranged wife. And then Mohadi said stuff we never thought he was capable of saying. We read words like “awkward slacktivism”.
He wrote: “ e interconnectivity with social media ecologies have been relaying viral moral panics, peddling flames of lies, creating myths, and muddling the reality of my life as a family man.”
He was not finished, lecturing us about the effect of “digital media, in their hybridity”. Who knew Mohadi was a tech aficionado? Who knew he had such a grasp of Victorian English? He threatened that this was not over. He will get to the bottom – pardon the pun – of all this. “I promise to poke holes on this grand strategy from political foes,” he warned us.
Whoever leaked those audios must be afraid. is is no idle threat. When it comes to poking holes, the man’s abilities cannot be doubted.
Abundant candidates
MEANWHILE, Muckraker is amused at all the time being wasted debating who will replace Kembo as Vice-President.
Copious amounts of bandwidth wasted. Trees grew, got cut down, and pressed into newsprint just so newspapers could waste all of it debating who will be appointed Vice-President.
Let us face some facts. Kembo was your typical Zanu PF official; just another aged, idle and unproductive man. Zanu PF has no shortage of aged, idle and unproductive people. It is a factory of such. It is the depot where people go to order aged, idle and unproductive folks in bulk quantities. at party won’t have a problem replacing Kembo. ere is a surplus of uselessness there and nobody should be debating a replacement. ere is no shortage of men and women like Kembo.
Bulgarian circus
ONE of the most entertaining bits about watching online debates from the terraces is seeing how easily government’s propagandists tie themselves in knots.
First, last week, after being prodded by social media users, Information ministry permanent secretary Nick Mangwana snapped and lashed out. He told everyone to mind their own business. is Kembo business was all a bit of friendly hanky-panky between consenting adults, he screamed.
And then came deputy chief secretary Presidential-Communications George Charamba, who, unprovoked, shouted that Mohadi had, in fact, resigned last week. is, it was pointed out to him, would be illegal as the law requires the President to notify the country within 24 hours.
Poor ED (President Emmerson Mnangagwa). Who needs enemies when it is your own people working so hard to make your government look like a Bulgarian circus?
Incompetence doyen
SPEAKING of resignations and circuses, it was funny watching how much Charamba sounded like Chalton Hwende, the equally gormless secretarygeneral of the Nelson Chamisa variant of the MDC.
Speaking on the decision by Lilian Timveos to jump on the Zanu PF gravy train, Hwende claimed that Timveos had, in fact, resigned three weeks earlier. As to why this was kept a secret until she chose the thug life by going to bed with Zanu PF, only Hwende can explain.
e man, clearly, is practicing to be typical Zimbabwean leader. With his rank incompetence, Hwende is, so far, ticking all the boxes.
As for Blessing Chebundo, the man jumped ship to the Douglas Mwonzora variant of the MDC after losing a party primary to a party youth. He could have congratulated her and walked away with honour. But he decided he cannot let young people take over. He sees himself as an untouchable veteran. No wonder he ended up in Zanu PF, the home of likeminded old, unproductive louts.
Funny
MUCKRAKER laughed into his zumbani this week watching the President encourage us to be responsible.
Now that, from the kindness of his heart, he had decided to lift some lockdown restrictions, we must all behave. e Herald dutifully followed up with an editorial comment, headlined “lockdown easing demands responsibility”.
e nation awaits to see that message being sent to the President himself, who gathered hundreds to dance for him in Nyamandlovu recently.
We have not forgotten watching VIPs — including the real owner of the country — partying away in December, only to see the poor arrested for going out to scratch out a living. Let’s also send these appeals for “responsible behaviour” to Zanu PF officials like Kenneth Musanhi, who held a rally in Bindura, or to the Zanu PF officials we saw at a rally in Bikita this week.
Only trust
THIS week, Muckraker made a shocking discovery in an academic journal. According to a research paper by Massey University, one of the main reasons that New Zealand beat Covid-19 was because — wait for it — the public simply trusts their government. “We came together as a country, in part because we believed in our political and health experts to deliver and they did,” one researcher said.
So, you mean, there are people that actually trust their governments out there? People who listen to a government official talk and not burst out laughing at the lies? Shocking! How much is a visa?
“ e interconnectivity with social media ecologies have been relaying viral moral panics, peddling flames of lies, creating myths, and muddling the reality of my life as a family man . . . I promise to poke holes on this grand strategy from political foes.”