A neighbour, a young doctor stationed at one of the government hospitals here, lost laptops and mobile phones to some daring house breakers last month. Naturally, he rushed to the police to make a report. The cops “sprang” into action, and a few days later, they visited the burgled home with the “suspect” but found no one. Another few days later, a friend of mine who knew one of the investigating officers asked him if the good doctor had recovered the stolen stuff. “We did, but the doctor did not,” came the reply. And I imagine it was said with a knowing wink. Turns out the burglars had struck some illegal deal with the cops, and my friend suspects the cops “pocketed” the stolen property! So much for hunting the bad guys. The doctor keeps making endless trips to the police station to check on “progress” and each time they tell him they are still investigating. So much for law enforcement hey?

I found it interesting that the super-rich Virgin guy, Richard Branson, has been mentioned as having been part of plans to “retire” our dear old man, and it perhaps shows how desperate the world has been over the years to literally save Zimbabwe from sure doom because of the continued and unsustainable stewardship of someone stuck in time warp. The Virgin guy has dismissed reports that he offered Mugabe USD10 million as part of a sweetener to guarantee his quiet and exit and obviously bloodless power transfer. The Virgin guy says that’s fiction that he never authored and in any case that would be too little a sum. Obviously he has deep pockets, or else he fells Mugabe is worth more than that. Yet like some of the Zanu PF wiki dicks who wanted to see their life-long benefactor leave office reportedly said, Africa’s last King of Nationalism was not likely to take the money and run. It is rather morbidly refreshing that they see old man in that light: he ain’t for sale! Remembering of course that even the UN did dangle back in 2000 what was noted in news reports as a “lucrative exit package.”  He is still around ain’t he? One writer helpfully offered: “An exit strategy for Mugabe is widely believed to be the only answer to Zimbabwe’s political crisis, as it is Mugabe’s presence in the government that is the key stumbling block to progress.”

Now, the same wiki dicks feted by imperialists and lost their heads in the process obviously are for sale, having entered Faustian pacts long ago, and will welcome any largess never mind their indefatigable looting streak since independence came to these shores. We all know their appetite for all things tagged “filthy lucre” resembles that of a sumo wrestler, yet they just can’t seem to get enough, and we just have to point to the find of the century in Mutare. Yet we already know these are the same people named in the looting of the DRC, the national purse, the land what with multiple farm ownership, Willowgate, you name it. Still they are mighty insatiable. If it was libido, these many straws – or strokes – would have broken their backs! It is therefore obvious to me that the same people now falling over each other blaspheming as they use Biblical metaphors and allegories to lionise their supposed benefactor were [are still are in the secrecy of their foolish hearts] in fact cursing the old man saying: dai ndiri ini ndaitora chibhanzi [if it were me, I would have taken the money and ran like the wind]. Wick dicks. Leak, leak.

So this Sata[n] guy is now Zambian president. But we can see where this is going. He is the “opposition” guy who during this presidential bid slammed the “opposition” guy of another country, and we obviously wondered what his priorities were, whether he had run out epithets for Rupiah Banda, the then Zimbabwean Zambia president. And we obviously have to ask what this will mean about Tsvangirai trying to rally or engage other SADC leaders in his long stand-off with Mugabe. Can we expect Tsvangirai to have Sata’s ear? Maybe he will have it [the ear] for a bit of wringing like they do those bratty kindergarten kids, for that’s exactly how the new president was behaving in the run-up! But then it must be remembered this Sata guy was being advised not to stand for election because of his apparently failing health.

It’s already being asked about the political implications of voting for a guy whose “tenure” on earth is already under close scrutiny not by his opponents but his physicians! But then the history of post-independence African politics has plenty of these ailing old men who imagine themselves to be agile Herculeses imagining they can withstand the rigours of the rough political terrain known in these rather cruel parts. Recall that old fool Kamuzu Banda falling and failing to use his reflexes that had been slowed by old age and hitting his mouth on the hard earth? He still insisted he was raring to go, “the people still want me,” he said, like someone we know, despite plenty evidence to the contrary even among his very own comrades!

I ain’t no clairvoyant nor a tsikamutanda, but Zambians – and indeed the world – are obviously watching this Sata guy and will soon be asking themselves why the heck they voted for a sick guy for president.

Sometimes you just have to ask yourself about the frequency of knee-jerk reactions of government officials each time there is a political scandal that the mandarins invariably blame on the media for being “beamed’ to the public. The latest of course is the WikiLeaks excitement that has Zimbabwe in suspended animation to see what happens next as Mugabe fumbles for loyalists. Webster Shamu has responded rather predictably by threatening to shoot the messenger – the private press who are understandably having a field day reporting the explosive contents of the cables from US diplomats in Harare.

Like always, Shamu is dealing with fringe players who have nothing to do with the leaks. And this at a time when the relevance of the private media has never been so pressing as Zimbabwe heads for polls anytime in the not-so-distant future. The private media and proponents of unfettered access to information have reason to sit up and take notice and can only ignore Shamu’s pronouncements about effectively outlawing “Fleet street” to their own peril well knowing of course there is precedence to these threats to press freedom.

Someone mentioned the other day that Zimbabwe is now ripe for another printing press bombing, and when people start talking like that, you have to ask yourself if our politics is really that antithetic to democratic conversations. But then, you can ignore Zanu PF threats only if your name is Johnny Bravo! That of course is not any attempt to treat the country’s political and media relations as a laughing matter – remembering of course that a miffed Shamu once called some folks Andy Capp-types! Shamu typifies the straw-man fallacy in that, instead of addressing the real issues, he chooses to attack a constituency that has nothing to do with the matter at hand: he has chosen to attack the media, effectively telling the messengers not to deliver what no doubt has so far become 2011’s biggest political story here.

After all, in the aftermath of these leaked cables, everyone (at least in my world, every sensible Zimbabwean!)  is already celebrating the  first public signs of the demise of Shamu’s party and creatives are busy crafting pun-filled epitaphs. And now that Jonathan Moyo has said it loud and proud and after sleepless nights that these presidential back-stabbers must own up to their utterances, we wonder then why the heck Shamu is getting so volcanic hot under the collar and getting all puffed up inviting the wrath of cardiac arrest and at the wrong people! But then when you have SpongeBob Squarepants-types in charge of managing political information and attempting to hide behind very thin fingers, you can bet your ass you will be engaging in a dialogue with a bunch of morons.

Instead, let them eat each other, no one will mourn.

It was always going to be difficult to run with the hares and hunt with the dogs, and the indigenisation drive is just one of those things that show how this has become more than real if this metaphor is to be located in the country’s body politic. The fact that “a moderate” like Gono has attempted to steer Minister Kasukuwere away from a bank takeover drive that is a patently kamikaze-inspired policy but has still met the very obduracy that has landed the country in this mess ought to tell us something about the extent the Prime Minister’s MDC is emasculated.

We read the other day that Minister Biti was to meet Minister Kasukuwere over this bank takeover after some tough talk from Gono who himself has never found favour with Biti. It becomes a convoluted matrix of politics meets economics, and we can be sure that these power games have no ordinary Zimbabwean at the centre of indigenisation or economic reconstruction. It is dumb even to imagine that Gono would agree on anything with the MDC based on what we already know, and just what is it that can be read in the public spat with Kasukuwere? Are we seeing an overt emergence of moderates who have no place in the Zanu PF scheme of radicalism?

Zimbabweans have long been conditioned to read developments here in very emotive binaries because of the polarised politics of our post-independence history, and it will take some leap of faith for anyone to believe that “God’s banker” is reading from the same hymn sheet with men who have labelled him a terrorist. So are we now expected to see Gono and Biti punching from the same corner and cheer that indeed we have made that turn for the common good, or just dismiss this as another episode of the protracted battle for the control of the country’s resources by a group of people who still have to prove themselves that it is the Zimbabwean people who matter?  You just have to have your ear on the streets to understand how Zimbabweans think.

So, the Libyan ambassador Taher Elmagrahi got himself into trouble for hoisting the “rebel flag” in Harare.

You just have to ask yourself when he actually had the flag in his possession for him to raise it as soon as word got out Gaddafi literally had one foot in the grave. Could be Libya’s point man in Harare always was a sympathiser and was waiting for that aha! moment. And of course all that claim about “following the people’s will” is just but a ruse veiled as diplomatic-speak, meaning he could have defected long ago had he the gall to dare Mugabe, a known long-time ally of the Libyan strongman! After all, we have just been told our own Sylvester Nguni made generous donations to his employer’s political opponents, meaning he could well just be waiting for his own aha moment and then he like Pilate will wash his hands of his allegiance to the regime and claim he is “following the will of the people of Zimbabwe” when the moment arrives. But then why not?

Who then can you trust in this wily game of politics? It’s great though when folks show their true colours, or in the case of Nguni, when their true colours are exposed in a court of law of all places! From the terraces, we damn sure are loving it.