The lengthy interview of Welshman Ncube published by Sunday Mail does make the case for bit of reality check for some politicians. When asked his honest opinion about what he sees as prospects for his party in the coming election, if he considers his formation a government-in-waiting so to speak, Ncube threw modesty to the wind and declared he believes he will win.

Look, nothing against any ambitious politician or human being for that matter, but it did highlight many things wrong with all efforts to usher in a truly government of the people without yet another flawed poll that has only spawned collation governments across the mother continent. Afro-pessimists say some irrelevant politicians throw their hats to the ring being only too aware of the possible benefits of being incorporated into the government on some technicality or frivolous claim to represent one region, ethnicity or another.

Welshman’s bitterness is all too palpable in all interviews one reads, and he still considers himself relevant to national politics, perhaps that is one of the reasons why accusations of him being a tribalist always creep into these sit-downs his has with scribes because by asking why he still imagines his relevance it is thought or seen to be ineluctably tied to his belief that there just has to be a chap from Matebeleland in the political scheme of things. But that’s for federalists, regionalists, devolutions to prove at the polls. These things are for some reason always understood that way because Ncube still apparently has to prove his claim of any representation of the people from that region seeing that he himself is not an elected MP or Senator.

He has been asked if he will consider any united front for political parties to come together and battle Mugabe from one corner, and it is only folks who have not followed Welshman’s politics who ask that question in the first place. He still does not have convincing answers as to why he let Mutambara make what was essentially a unilateral decision to back Simba Makoni in the past polls or indeed why Mutambara took the helm at the “smaller faction of the MDC”. By now he knows the old adage that there are no permanent friends in politics, not even permanent interests as Jonathan Moyo has shown. But one thing emerges from all these claims of relevance to national elections not only for Welshman Ncube but also those populist politicians who seem to want to ride on the back of the history of Matebeleland and whip up people’s tribal emotions even, that the people by now know better that the time for splitting votes is long gone, what the country needs, and which Zanu PF is painfully aware of, is a group of people who have relevance to the future of Zimbabwe. And these are politicians who bring to the electorate not stories of perpetual justification why they are engaged in gladiatorial politics and deserve the people’s vote but those whom the Zimbabwean people have no second thoughts investing their time under the scorching African sun to cast their vote as informed by the proverbial bread and butter issues.

For now, in numerous conversations in the streets of Bulawayo, without any pretense to scientific methodologies, questions have emerged if it is at all true that regional representation is an issue for that woman whose kids know not bread with butter, that Ndebele-speaking Nuts university graduate walking the streets as a loafer, that guy right there who for the umpteenth time has been given pairs of shoes by his employer in lieu of his pay cheque. Those are the bread and butter issues.

Before we self-destruct!

The three MDCs
Like WMDs
Are killing the hopes
Of ordinary folks
Perhaps they should re-learn the struggle’s ABCs

Phallic fervour

They approach each election
With feral phallic erection
Ask them to zip it
They stomp their feet
For what they fear is rejection

Utter butter

Bitter Biti knows better
Where his bread is buttered
What is uttered behind the shutters,
He should know, also matters

By God’s Grace

The one with a perforated face
Could soon have pride of place
If only the coming election
Escapes yet another condemnation
Here stands we, only by God’s Grace (wink)

“Do married men have affairs for the bad sex?” asked Rielle Hunter, mistress to then US Presidential hopeful John Edwards when she appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight. Morgan took a pause before he continued with the interview. Apparently according to Hunter who has written a book on her scandalous affair with Edwards which produced a child, she had the best sex of her life with Mr. Edwards, apparently explaining what drove the relationship. Yet it was a relevant question with resonance in Zimbabwe, many thousands of miles away, where the so-called small-houses have become a virtual cultural phenomenon, with purists mourning the morally straight and narrow ways of our forefathers. Are these extra-marital relationships always about sex, great or otherwise? You listen to pub tales where grown men find the pub as some kind of refuge from what they see as henpecking back home. It’s clear then that some men take to the bottle, while others take to extramarital relationships to deal with whatever is happening on the home front, yet there is no doubt that a lot of explanations that emerge seem to be solely based on common-sense street-based sociology which has done nothing to understand the growth and acceptance of what other researchers say has become a major springboard for HIV/Aids.

A young preacher who this year returned to the motherland after spending five years of Bible school in Mauritius said to me the other day that when he left Zimbabwe, he had never heard such a term as “small-house” and it had to be explained to him recently by fellow churchmen what it meant. He seemed genuinely lost, and all I could think of was, “well, my friend, you’ve been away too long.” The fact that the preacher appeared dumbfounded that small-houses had become common-place, accepted even, it did point to a need to better understand what drives this “small-house” business without haughty moralising. But then, there are many out there who see everyman as a potential candidate for Cheaters the television show. Others go an extreme extra mile and see everyman as a potential rapist!

Yet I find myself having to ask whether indeed it is all about sex, whether great or mediocre, or something else. Years ago NBA superstar Dennis Rodman had a fling with Madonna, and he made sure he told the tabloids about it: “I thought she was gonna be an acrobat, not a dead fish,” or something to that effect. Another Hollywood wise crack was asked by a hack who thrived on the salacious what he expected from a woman he took to bed. The hack must have expected a blow-blow breakdown about acrobatics and such, but the Hollywood guy responded: “Nothing, she must just lie there.” Ergo, why do men keep having extramarital affairs, is it about the great sex as some would have the world believe? In developed countries, some have explained it off as a sign of mid-life crisis, I wonder then in a country where life expectancy for men is under forty, when does mid-life set in?