There is always something uncharitable said about power whenever one has it in abundance and has the ability to influence things – and human beings. Thus it has been said that if you want something done expeditiously you must know people in high places. Power and influence. You have one, you have both. You have it all. The world in your palm. Where better else than well-connected politicians?

But there are also people in low places who have been known to have power and influence – the type that only gets you and them into trouble with the laws of Man and also the laws of nature as the favours they bestow and their line of work more often than not leave someone dead.

Power-drunk men and women have ruled ruthlessly over bamboozled men, women and children and stories abound about the Central African Republic’s Jean Bedel Bokassa being a cannibal having a strong palate for his opponents. Power to eat others, yes he had it! So imagine while enraged baddies scream “I will kill you,” you have them roaring, “I will eat you!” At least Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s Ngwazi and self-anointed President-for-life let his pet crocodiles do the eating for him. Thus man and beast became no different.

It would be interesting to look at the favourite cuisine of African presidents, as a documentary showed on DStv the other day let us in on the food enjoyed by the two Bushes, Clinton and other past American presidents.

The powerful people that we know and who tend to be held in awe by other mere mortals have for some reason always been politicians. This is despite the truism that politicians are just people after all – very fallible and very mortal like everybody else. Do politicians go hungry? Stupid question! They have a right to eat, and whatever they eat will never be used against them in a court of culinary preferences! And what do we have to say for the powerless that appear by their own peculiar circumstances to have no right to eat? They are the wretched of the earth as Fanon put it.

Politicians tend to see themselves as “the Chosen Ones” (catch my drift?) both omnipotent and omniscient in the fashion of the philosopher-kings lionised, idolised and iconised by the sages of ancient Greece, so imagine someone who by a fluke of nature has been burdened by being endowed with the exact opposite. They are neither wise nor powerful but though they are hungry, they are sure not likely to eat one of their own!

These powerless people could be wise in their own eyes, but within their realm and physical realities have no power to control anything, not even the joystick of a play station if they were handed one. How can they when they are hungry? For them everything becomes heavy, not the type seen in political heavyweights who fail to lift themselves off giant beds! Just look at them trying to get off chauffeur-driven Mercs with their sagging bellies refusing to leave the car!

We know the mysterious power and ability of politicians to erect bridges where there is no river, ability to literally build castles in the air for rural folks, etc, but it is the ultimate powerlessness of a single unemployed mother to control the destiny of her offspring that raises the spectre of human limitation in a universe where political power appears to guarantee one economic utopia and therefore eternal bliss.

Have we not seen how aspiring parliamentary candidates fall over each other and fomenting bloodbaths as they seek to earn the right to represent “we the people” only because that unspoken determination to occupy that space is informed by that yearning for power? People “naturally” associate political power with the control of not only people’s lives but more importantly resources be they natural or man-made and thus becoming an MP becomes for many the ultimate triumph in the quest of all human endevours.

Ultimately one is inclined to rather ask a rather asinine question: what is power if it gives you the right to eat and it goes on to take away the right to eat from the powerless? Crazy world huh? “I can’t talk religion (politics[i]) to a man with hunger in his eyes.”  George Bernard Shaw (1905).

If only politicians could read!

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[i] italics mine.

There appears to be something inherently wrong with everything concerning African politics. The more rhetoric is contradicted by reality, the better the job. While everybody agrees that Zimbabwe needs a literal quick-fix, there appears to be no “global” signposts about what ideal conditions have to set or met for this quick-fix to come to fruition.

We have on one hand the PM appealing to the end of the violent expropriation of white-owned commercial farms, on the other, the usual militants upping the ante making sure they loot whatever is left before anything emerges from this government that would bar lawlessness and effectively forced farm acquisitions and abductions – at least among other State-sponsored evils.

We still have the country’s highest courts refusing to grant bail to jailed activists, yet Mugabe calls Tsvangirai his brother, a brother who has demanded the release of those same activists and also his incarcerated supporters. So much for fraternal love!

The formation of the inclusive government is obviously something sceptics accepted grudgingly and one which inveterate optimists welcomed as a sure-fire solution to the country’s longstanding crisis.

But debate has raged about the Vic Falls shindig where a 100-day plan was adopted as a benchmark to be used to keep tabs on what needs to be done to move the nation forward. Intellectuals, academics, street know-it-alls had unkind words for the retreat that it was a waste of time and money. Turns out the World Bank met the tab, so then it wasn’t our money being spent why complain right? Wrong! Is this not the same WB that has set stringent conditions for the government concerning the re-opening of credit lines etc? The same people who always have harsh words against government spending.

Where the splashing of money occurs no matter how noble – if at all –  in a time and place where poverty is ubiquitous, surely questions are bound to be asked about the morality of it all. Why waste so much on an already bloated cabinet when it could have been put to better use considering cholera and dead everything? But that is now water under the bridge: they came, they talked, they ate, visited the John, they went. The nation watched, drooled, cried, and slept on empty stomachs. Harsh you say. Well, that’s the truth Ruth.

Perhaps these are just some of the issues that have been blurred and become inconsequential both in public and media discourse that people become conveniently amnesiac when the money is THROWN AT them not WITHHELD FROM them?

We were told it (the Vic Falls retreat) was designed as an opportunity for them to bond, James Bond. Whether it worked remains to be seen, but I always have a problem with people who always try to stretch and impose the Christian virtues on others, and for purposes of political expediency, appeal to superhuman responses and glibly preach “forgiveness” and “moving forward.”

Is the political Man easily inclined to that metanoia – perhaps Mandela, but it sure is a marvel to see men and women who were bludgeoned to near death grinning and rubbing shoulders – among other things – with their erstwhile tormentors all for good of the nation. Ain’t that saintly? But all this takes a lot of stretching of the faith of “ye of poor faith,” to understand really what is happening, yet we also know the fate of hypocrites as laid down by the Holy Book. So, as they would say, hypocrites beware! And here I am particularly thinking Zanu PF. Sorry. Speck in a brother’s eye, log in mine? Heard it all before folks, thanks!

I was taken aback when I read the Sunday Times of South Africa the other day where Finance Minister Trevor Manuel cracked the fiscal whip on public servants where he cut unnecessary spending on travel, hotel accommodation, restaurant bills etc. These are the chaps who seem to believe taxpayers’ money is manna from heaven to be spent whichever way they please. Reminded me of the old Sicilian saying: “public money is like Holy Water, everybody helps himself to it.”

But good thing there are men with enough scruples to stymie these palatial romps. The minister said the saved cash could go a long way in meeting the government’s more urgent social services obligations or something to that effect. This same thrift has been demanded by the Zim Finance Minister, but still we get pointers that African politics will always be tinged with that unpalatable attraction to extravagance in circumstances that demand utmost self-deprecation.

But then, the sentiment here has always been that one cannot be a politician and be poor at the same time. A poor politician, come on give us a break! It is obvious then that our own FM will have a tough task convincing men and women who since 1980 saw a seat in parliament as a passport to wild wealth to cut down on “eating” taxpayers’ money. Thus the dangling of the ostentatious Mercs to the very men and women who vehemently criticized these status creatures as the ultimate sign of the betrayal of the struggle by the founding party becomes for the ordinary Jack just that – a betrayal of the very principles that gave birth to Zimbabwe’s only real political opposition. But who cares?

Contradictions galore in our politics and one just has to forgive them who see this GPA thing as being another Africa hocus pocus meant to pacify restive citizens by means of perpetuating the status quo but disguising it as a people-centric experiment. If it doesn’t work – which it never will as we all know because we will still go to elections at an appointed time – then we can always point to the traditional fall guys and blame them for the fallout.

As some sages of yore observed, the human spirit is full surprises. We may wake up one day with Zanu PF deciding the MDC-T is sure indeed the only political entity with the wherewithal to rescue the country. Well, dream on, a voice whispers.

The question one has to ask is what are we likely to see at the expiration of the tenure of this inclusive government when polls are called and the MDC-T once again emerges victorious in those elections? Another Zanu PF rebuttal of the people’s popular vote, then another protracted impasse as political parties jockey over what is best for the country, then another inclusive government? When is it all going to end? Perhaps when there is no one to offer political opposition to the founding party? You must hear the frustration in the street. Listen to any civil servant and you will weep.

Someone said the other day that with the coming of the MDC into government in February life suddenly changed for the better, so imagine if free and fair elections were held in the 18 or 100 months they are scheduled, would Zanu PF stand a chance? These are questions crisis and poverty weary Zimbabweans ask – well at least in Bulawayo. They just want to get on with their lives without envying the politicians’ gravy.

I interviewed a vendor the other day and asked him what he most strongly felt should change in his life after the signing of the GPA and the subsequent formation of the tripartite government. He was brutally honest: “I just want a proper job in the factories. I have no respect selling razor blades in the streets and living in fear of police raids all the time.” There you have it gentlemen, go ahead, wear the fancy suits, drink the whisky, drive Mercs you benzis, have another retreat after the 100-days, again put benchmarks but for god’s sake remember that vendor. It ain’t easy being an African politician, just don’t make it even harder for yourselves by doing all the wrong things.

A prominent human rights lawyer brutalised by security agents a few years ago put it beautifully: it is like asking a snake to have dinner with a frog. He was giving his thoughts on the swearing in of Morgan Tsvangirai as Prime Minister in front of an unsmiling Robert Mugabe. Deadpan or just uncaring. You could almost hear him: “Let’s just get it over with. I have other things to do.”

That is how this whole thing is being viewed by many who have had to watch the country being messed up by the increasingly senile Founding Father even in the face of all odds being staked against him. In the streets you could feel it, in the pubs and commuter omnibuses you could hear it: no joy that finally one of our own is in government to take us to the Promised Land.

While thousands thronged the stadium to hear the Prime Minister speak after his swearing in, many who stayed home cursed. Mugabe rules! The refrain was loud enough even as the people walked about aimlessly, wishing they were in another land where they had jobs and able to feed their families.

That people have lost all interest in contemporary politics is a reality all too palpable. The folks talk about how they have been reduced to scavengers; the very scavengers as described a few years ago by the very man who today stands as Prime Minister. When he said it back then, he inevitably invited the acerbic tongue of the Founding Father and his doctors of spin. Even when that valiant Catholic prelate from Bulawayo Pius Ncube and the then executive mayor of the city Ndabeni Ncube reported people in the city were dying of hunger, the Founding Father was apoplectic. These people were in league with the Devil, never mind that the snake as used in Biblical symbolism is the Devil himself.

It is this and other things that has people cursing: why have this charade of a unity government with a snake? And this is not that snake in the grass that strikes while you are busy minding your own business.

People die of hunger and cholera and one man and his cohorts claim it is a silent genocide being perpetrated by imperialists. No one understands why this GNU thing had to happen. Politics as usual perhaps?

When Nkomo entered into that pact with the devil, his story was that he wanted to stop the violence, the killings, and the politics of hate that existed back then. Today however, I hear some people say what reason did the MDC have for joining the Zanu PF in government?

Some analysts say it was pressure from the toothless SADC leaders. Then if that holds true, the people here have every reason to say they were never part of this negotiated settlement in the first place. It was all African politics as usual that excludes the interests of the ordinary man, woman and child.

If an opposition political party can be pressured to enter into a coalition government with a losing party, then as logic would have it, the losing party can also well be pressured to leave power gracefully. Unless of course the losing party still controls the state apparatus of power and threatens civil strife if it is not given political space in the proposed government. They said it before anyway, them who claim to have fought the 70s bush war, that they are ready to take up arms and return to the bush and reverse any electoral outcome that favours the opposition.

We have heard it all before, a ruling party loses an election and it claims the winning opposition rigged the poll. What crap! But then Zimbabwe is just full of crap.

You just have to hear the people talk. No optimism whatsoever. Misery with a capital “M”.

Just this month alone, I know whole families who left the country for South Africa and these families have no clue what they will do once they get to the so-called “place of gold.” But their stories are from the same abject universe: “we need to send our children to school.”

A journalist working for a government-controlled daily also left for South Africa, never mind that he had no passport. He just had to leave, and according to him, he has no clue what he will do once he gets there. I recalled a cynic years ago who quipped, “I don’t know where am going, but I believe I’m in the right direction.”

And imagine all these people are fleeing just when a “new” government has been formed, so one has to imagine that this GNU ought to give people hope for a new beginning but then no one wants to stick around to find out how it pans out. What then? Turns out only the politicians know.

That people do not trust Zanu PF is a historical fact backed by numerous events since the party’s formation back in the 1960s.  That fact was cemented after the MDC National Executive Council agreed January 30 to get into bed with the party roundly condemned for running down the economy and horrendous human rights violations.

Instead of this important announcement being met with wild ululation, word on the street remains one of subdued hope – or total absence thereof – with sentiments like: “What the heck? Who cares anymore?” It is when the people’s sense of resolve and hope is destroyed that one looks at the whole thing about politics – African at least – as inherently flawed.

Do elections offer hope for the masses anymore? What about non-electoral political settlements like the one Zimbabwe is witnessing? These liberation parties have for long claimed ownership and entitlement of the nations they liberated from white minority rule, and it does not make any sense for the general populations that these elites seem to only accept the opposition into government only as lesser political entities under their phony tutelage.

What tangible space then does the victorious political opposition occupy to be able to change and reserve decades-old policies that were engineered by the liberation movements?

I listened to a group of unemployed men rubbing their hands with unbounded glee that the decision by the MDC to at last join Zanu PF in government was a harbinger of a change of their fortunes.

But another in their midst – perhaps from that Afro-pessimism school to which I happen to belong – was quick to warn them against premature celebration.  More like premature ejaculation perhaps: it’s over before it even begins! After muted consideration, another was instantly converted to that school. There was little or nothing to celebrate, they agreed. But as some would have said in different circumstances, “let’s give peace a chance,” so perhaps let’s give this experiment a chance.

Zanu PF is viewed as a “senior partner” by many here who watched ZAPU pitifully give itself one hard kick in the butt into political oblivion when Mugabe tricked that good man Joshua Nkomo into believing they were equal partners.”Yes we are brothers, but I am the big brother!”

That is the history many sceptics are reminded of today, and as long as there is no confidence in this formation of the GNU among not only the ordinary people but most importantly among the political players themselves as both parties are reported to have inveterate hardliners opposed to the union, then this is yet another historic triumph for ZANU PF.

And the people’s understanding of local politics does not offer any sunny side of contemporary Zimbabwe. For starters, does this mean for example the release of political prisoners? As far as recent developments and media reports go, Zanu PF has not yet committed itself in that regard. Are we likely to see Zanu PF dropping its tired rhetoric of calling the MDC-T puppets of the West etc? It would be incorrigible naivety to image Zanu PF having that instant conversion in a bid to move the country forward and up the Sisphyean path of economic recovery and the rebuilding of essential services. That conversion would sure be a miracle worth sneaking into the pages of the Bible.

What the people need is Mugabe to go peacefully not the mere signing on the dotted line of the GNU, that is what you hear everyday.

Many have tried – and many have failed – to change Zanu PF from within but only to question their own wisdom after dining with the Devil only to fail to dehorn it.

Zimbabweans agree the country must move forward, what they do not agree on is whether supping with the Devil is the right path. Better the Devil you do not know after all! While popular sentiment across the country and indeed the world is that what Zimbabwe needs is a total makeover with the absence of Zanu PF, it is instructive that the MDC is seen as having done this against its better judgement.

It can only be because there is something Zimbabweans already know about Zanu PF for this mass deception thing is being viewed as precisely that – mass deception. If only the MDC was being passed the poisoned chalice in the sense of Zanu PF leaving government. But what they have done is actually sit down to partake of the contents and return it to people who have taken gulps of a mysterious serum to render themselves immune to the contents therein.

Zanu PF is beyond caring, and the US government has already said it is sceptical about the whole thing, so imagine the Zimbabwean people themselves who for years have been forced to live with untold misery at the hands of Zanu PF. Their scepticism knows no bounds and with good reason.

I have never seen such dejection in so many people’s lives ever since I was born. You meet virtually everyone asking what the latest is concerning the formation of the government of national unity in Zimbabwe. With the news beamed on satellite TV that this has been yet another dud, you see it in the people’s eyes: Dejection, anger and all kinds of unprintable epithets aimed at the Founding Father.

This is one nation that carries such collective misery one wonders if Zanu PF has any conscience left in its soul, someone thinks aloud. But its allowed, I figure.

The sentiment on the streets is: why did we vote in the first place if we are still expected to wait for Zanu PF “to negotiate the MDC into power?” You see it everyday and you feel your eyes welling up.

“Why are we being put through this,” an old man said as he trudged home from his work place where he stands guard with nothing but a baton stick.

I thought I saw him shed tears.

“Shame on Robert Mugabe,” another octagenarian said as he related how his rural neighbours are scrounging for food. You hear these miserable stories from the older folks who saw it all and thought they had built nests for their grandchildren only to be told their pensions and savings are now useless.

My mother saw for the first time an American greenback note and she made sure she did not accept it despite the fact that this is now the standard for all kinds of transactions.

“What kind of money is that?” asked the old girl.

She would rather settle for the South African Rand, she said.

My heart went into pieces. “Be careful with these Rands,” I said. “The boys out there will fleece you.”

“I will be fine,” she said.

Why can’t she and all those old darlings just use the local currency than be confused by all this crap, I cursed.

I have seen old people with distant looks in their eyes just wondering what the hell hit them, wondering what got into the head of that man they lifted shoulder high in that euphoric moment back then. But no one has the answers.

The elders say it goes deeper than power mongering, they see something we do not see and they are not at liberty to confide. But they carry the burden of having lived through the good old times of the white man, then the promise of the black man, then watched a good man gone bad wrecking havoc on a jewel they were proud to dedicate their blood, sweat and tears to.

I listened to Shona-speaking old men cursing the Founding Father and it was a bit curious as the understanding and interpretation of the dynamics of local politics has for years been Shonas being Mugabe-for-life types.

This is the history that has been fed by peddlers of ethnic politics where tribal overlords are supposed to have whole rabid acolytes lining up to voice their undying support all in the name of ethnic loyalty.

This indeed has existed, but I wondered if that rings true today. This is the kind of ethnicity that has seen the ghost of Gukurahundi continuing to haunt the psyche of many here.

So now by the twist of fate, Mugabe had alienated his own, I wondered as I watched the mouths of the old men move as they talked politics.

Not so, as the old men proffered.

All human beings must be respected, and this man does not respect anybody, one old man said as he puffed poignantly at his roll of shamrock and waited for a new day, silently wondering what it would bring.

Nothing new about the New Year, someone complained. Yeah, another echoed. In fact the whole nation chorused: “No cheer for the near year!” “Screw it. I’m leaving this hellhole,” cursed a university graduate who is yet to get his certificate because the university says it does not have the special paper on which these important documents are printed. “I am taking my kids with me to South Africa,” whined a parent who came for the December holiday only to be told that Zimbabwean schools will not be opening anytime soon. So the kids are going to be enrolled in a South African school when everybody knows Zimbabwe has for decades been laughing at the education systems of other brother Africans. Now the tables have sure turned. “Happy New Year my arse,” chorused the whole nation. Great, just great.