Watched Zanu PF chief doctor of spin Rugare Gumbo in last night’s news bulletin talk about Daniel Shumba’s bid for a “prodigal son” return to the higher echelons of the party he cursed for poor governance and lack of democratic principles a few years ago.  Shumba left the party after seeing what every other Zimbabwean seemed to notice, that this party Zanu PF was no place for progressives. And his chosen way to make himself heard? He formed his own political party, the United People’s Party.

It’s crazy why people who seem better off and can lead productive lives as private citizens minding their own business always seem to think entering gladiatorial politics is the way to go, their own contribution to the betterment of humankind. Of course not many Zimbabweans even know Shumba formed a political party of his own, and it just became one of those outfits that make very forgettable appearances in the run up to elections and quietly disappear soon after. Think such parties as the African National Party, Peace Action is Freedom for All and others in between.

And now, Daniel Shumba has once again rekindled his courtship with Zanu PF, only to be told he must line up like everyone else and join from cell level and then work his way up. And this for a guy who was once a Zanu PF provincial chairperson! No favours here comrades, we don’t forget that easily. And yes, he must first publicly announce that he has disbanded his political party. I cannot even start to imagine what is going in this guy’s mind after what Gumbo told the nation on national telly. And in classic Zanu PF-speak, Shumba “expelled himself” from the party!

Surely Shumba must have shoved it and went on with his many businesses, than subject himself to such humiliation, first at the
2008 ballot back then when he had to launch a constitutional court application to contest and now at the hands of Zanu PF itself. I suppose Shumba’s flaw is that, like many other ill-informed Zimbabweans, the future of Zimbabwe lies with Zanu PF, those types who are obsessed with being members of this party of the miserable past simply because it offers them unbridled avenues to self-aggrandisement. Everyone knows this by now, but then for Shumba to be told that he must re-join the party as an ordinary card-holding member ought to be yet another lesson for all Zimbabweans Africans that there is life beyond politics. But then he did once say that forming the United People’s Party was a joke. Yeah right, look who’s laughing now!

I see Canaan Banana is back in the news, but it was last night’s Weakest Link on BBC Entertainment that gave me a few chuckles. Ann Robinson asks contestant: “What last name did Zimbabwe’s first President between 1980 and 1987 have, Cucumber or Banana?” “Cucumber,” contest responds! I wondered if Banana’s son was watching.

Reading a book by a Franciscan friar on the fall of apartheid and came across this quote: “It is often victims who are cursed by memory while perpetrators are blessed by forgetting,” from  The File by British author Timothy Garton Ash. I looked it up and a review by the UK’s Guardian newspaper says it’s an account on the feared Stasi in East Germany. I thought, yet another poignant reminder why the Gukurahundi ghost lives on. Yet I figured it goes even as recent as the 2008 Zimbabwean polls where we find the murders of political activists remaining unpunished, the perpetrators blissfully amnesiac.

It must be pretty frustrating for the ordinary guy with very empty pockets who has looked up to other people to solve Zimbabwe’s headache, a migraine that has defied the Aspirin that has come in many shapes and forms rendering it nothing but a very useless placebo. Turns out SADC has been such an Aspirin, at least faced with an obdurate headache in the form of Zanu PF. Each time SADC meets to map the way forward concerning the holding of elections, whatever communiqué is issued after such lengthy deliberations appears to be futile in that it has become predictable for the ordinary guy with very empty pockets that President Mugabe will say no one will dictate to Zimbabwe, a sovereign nation, what to do.

Mugabe has said no one has a right to interfere in the affairs of “his” country, effectively saying whatever it is that SADC recommends, he will not accept it as long it does not coincide with his own position, never mind how anti-people that position has been fashioned. You only have to listen to or read statements from party blabbermouth Rugare Gumbo, and you wonder if Zanu PF has any reason belonging to SADC. The ordinary guy with very empty pockets believes Zanu PF belongs to the dustbin of history, I heard the guy say the other day! But then the pan-Africanist shindig bringing together Africa’s “leading liberation movements” here has been cited by Zanu PF loyalists (like that beefy guy Herald guy booted out of Botswana a few years back) as proof that Mugabe is being supported by fellow anti-imperialist spirits in his calls for polls this year. It was then US President Ronald Reagan who said the memorable line back in 1985 after “terrorist attacks by Shi’ite Muslims”:  “We are not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states, run by the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.” Well, the same can be said about these folks!

Finance Minister Tendai Biti and human rights watchers in and outside the country have already said holding elections this year and without any electoral reforms is one sure way to sacrifice people’s lives as a political violence powder keg is sure to explode, recalling of course the 2008 madness where Zanu PF enthusiasts are accused of punishing political opponents with death. It ain’t alarmists who are predicting blood and gore if polls are held without the necessary conditions being set as already outlined by the GPA and as insisted by the MDC, but it is indeed safe to say the world has been warned about the political violence that has already begun in many parts of the country. Imagine then if the polls are officially called? Considering this, no one therefore can be criticised for concluding that this could yet be another African story of dead consciences where people will say they saw it coming but did nothing to stop it before it happened. There are just too many such stories that do not need any repeating.

And the painful bit is that some faith-based non-governmental organisations and Churches are already involved in activities and programmes of national healing where victims of political violence during past elections are sitting together with the perpetrators in search of peace in their hearts. What then becomes of these people in the face of yet more election violence when past scars remain unhealed? And this in a country where 1980s violence continues to hog contemporary political discourse. You just have to listen to Moses Mzila Ndlovu to get the point. And the guy is a government minister!

“Zanu PF Politburo member Professor Jonathan Moyo on Wednesday said Africa was facing a serious deficit of leaders with true African values,” reported the Chronicle of 1 June 2012. Moyo couldn’t have said it better, but then he is the type of fellow who does not listen to what he is saying! In the same story he extolled the (rabid) nationalism of South Africa’s Julius Malema, naming him along your regular pan-Africanists in the mould of Kenyatta, Nyerere, Kaunda and Nkrumah. I wondered what these men would have to say about that, but then dead men tell no tales. But it is agreed that Africa faces a serious leadership deficit and we certainly do not have to only look at the troubles that spurred the toppling of Mubarak who has just being given a life prison term for presiding over the unnecessary slaughter of his compatriots. In fact, we have Moyo’s very own Zanu PF where his party’s leader has said he is not ready to leave his post (despite the Wiki revelations from non other than Moyo, Muzembi and many others that the old man has no place in contemporary power games) because there simply isn’t a suitable candidate within the ranks to succeed him. Not even Moyo apparently! Yet by “slamming” the new crop of African leaders, Moyo betrays Zanu PF’s disregard for the popular vote as these new African leaders came to power not by jambaja but by what would be electoral processes anathema to Zanu PF. After all, one cynical political science don has commented that Moyo’s party is rejecting the draft constitution because it is too democratic for Zanu PF’s liking!

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong. – Donald Robert Perry Arquis, American poet (1933)

For a long time the complaint here in Zimbabwe has been the thievery of state resources by politicians from a party that still claims relevance three decades after proving it has no business steering this ship. And the thievery has virtually become an official exercise.

One will recall a time when local papers splashed the now Defence Minister’s wealth valuing it at billions of dollars, a time when the Zim dollar was considered useful. Of course it was asked where the hell he got that kind of money considering the salaries of government ministers were – and still are – public knowledge.

Time was the Kumbirai Kangais grabbed news headlines with allegations of sweeping clean the national silos (and we saw him not a long time ago on national television being toasted on his birthday by Simon Khaya Moyo who “celebrated” the man’s integrity!).

Time was when senior government officials claimed incredible disability gratuities, some claiming up to 80 percent disability, never mind they continued to occupy such lofty positions as government ministers and top cops. Talk about equal opportunity and the spirit of “disability is not inability!” If only that were true.

And then it took the woman who bashed lawyer Gugulethu Moyo, screamed profanities about then opposition gadfly Morgan Tsvangirai’s manhood, to be scorned for Zimbabweans to get a look see into the wealth amassed by Constantine Chiwenga. Of course Jocelyn deliberately and vindictively made the public claims in order to shock and awe and prompt us to us where the heck all that wealth came from, considering the scorned woman knew the kind of bread the soldier brought home on his salary.

And then the VP Mujuru’s point man Sylvester Nguni’s domestic troubles also became what let us in on the kind of wealth that has been amassed on what would be a measly government minister’s salary.

And then Chombo who seeks to rival real estate don Donald Trump and his stupendous wealth that only became public after a bitter woman who all along enjoyed the same trappings at the drooling of “ordinary” Zimbabwean.

And then Obert Mpofu, who does not need hostile domestic waters to have his wealth splashed ostentatiously, owning prime Bulawayo real estate and big business (acquired on the advice of Saviour Kasukuwere to borrow from banks, he says), feeding 10,000 people on his “birthday bash” and seeks to put to shame the wealth of your typical amoral African politician.

Of course there are many more.

And then Finance Minister Biti complains about the kleptocracy that has become rooted in the diamond fields.

One would think these are issues that would inform voters and determine how they use their franchise, yet Zimbabwe offers many bad examples about how the politics do not necessarily have to reflect the people’s sentiments. A politician can go on looting the people’s wealth and still expect those same people to vote for him! Crazy ain’t it?

If the people decide they have had enough and show this through the ballot, these same people are accused of being influenced by external forces who are imposing Western models of democracy that are not applicable here! But you still have to ask what culture under the sun has ever accepted thievery, what kind of voters gleefully embrace the embrace kleptocracy of their leaders when this kind of behaviour is impoverishing millions.

It should be quiet a simple exercise really to connect the dots, and it does not need any racking of the brain: if people complain about lousy amenities, faeces on their doorsteps because of archaic water and sewer mains, living with the threat of disease everyday, school children failing to be looked after by the State, pensioners being abandoned by the State, if the people see the brazen posh lifestyles of the political elites, surely the only way to address these and other issues must be to vote for someone else. But then for some reason, it does not work that way here.

A politician is a devil’s quilted anvil. He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard. John Webster, English dramatist (1623)