The Sunday Mail
Wendy Nyakurerwa – Assistant Editor
There are always two constant scenarios in the game of politics, if one is not a winner; they are the looser. There is no in between.
Victors almost always never waste any time gallivanting all over the place polluting our air with noise because they have more important things to do. On the other hand, losers almost always seek relevance in the strangest places.
On March 9, 2015, Itai Dzamara, an opposition politician-cum-fly by night journalist went missing after being “abducted by some unidentified men”. A year on, not even a hair of his head has been found.
MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai joins other people as they march along the streets of Harare in commemoration of Itai Dzamara’s disappearance
We commiserate with the family.
A lot of speculation has been bandied about concerning this sad story. And opportunists in MCD-T have taken advantage of this disappearance to play with people’s emotions.
You see, Itai Dzamara is a family man, with a wife and two children who are obviously missing him. Hubby and daddy disappeared and they must be living through hell.
Last Wednesday marked exactly one year since the disappearance and Morgan Tsvangirai and his few remaining hangers-on took to the streets of Harare to mark the anniversary “in solidarity with the Dzamara family”.
There is a rat smelling there. A very big one, probably carrying bubonic plague too.
Earlier in the week, Dzamara’s family filed an urgent High Court application to get the police to allow the march.
It was that urgent. Yet when they got what they wanted in the courts, the day of the march came and they were nowhere near the front row.
Rather, it was Tsvangirai and his deputy Thokozani Khupe whom we saw leading the pack, smiling from ear to ear.
Smiling, when dear Dzamara is still missing!
You have to give it to Tsvangirai. No Kodak moment gets overlooked. He grabs it with both hands, eyes wide shut.
The Legend of the Parks gaffe is testament to the love for Kodak moments.
So on this day in question, which was supposed to be Dzamara’s memorial day of sorts, the MDC-T gang where all smiles as they posed and looked straight into the cameras.
Forgive us for expecting more solemn faces.
Where l come from, our culture dictates that when one is attending a funeral or memorial service for a loved one, family, friend, colleague, neighbour or even distant relative; if they are too stingy with their tears, they can at least wear a sorry face to show their compassion towards those affected; unless of course “kana vari ivo vanenge vadya munhu”, in which case there will be an urgent need for a tsikamutanda.
But let me hasten to say that this culture obviously doesn’t apply in the Western-sponsored MDC-T camp; instead, they grin ear to ear when they are saddened by “crimes against humanity”.
It is the same sad-glee Bush and company had when they spoke of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Perhaps at this point it would be prudent to ask them what they know concerning Dzamara’s disappearance.
But the activists didn’t end there, they stooped to even lower depths.
See, when one is guilty of something and their sixth sense tells them that someone else knows about it, they become uncomfortable because they know that it will only be a matter of time before they are exposed.
Such is the case in MDC-T.
For the past 12 months, rational people have been asking why the opposition party has been making so much noise over Dzamara alone as if he is the only missing person.
This time around, thinking that they had finally devised a perfect solution that would make them look cleaner than saints, they roped in Paul Chizuze, an activist who went missing in 2012.
Never mind the fact that the courts had given the green light to Dzamara’s family to conduct the march for one purpose, which was marking his disappearance’s anniversary.
Patson, ltai’s sibling, had done well in notifying the police, and then the High Court, of the family’s intention to hold a “religious march” in remembrance of his brother.
What then was Chizuze’s picture doing on those posters?
As l have said, there is a big rat stinking here.
The fact that Chizuze was slotted into Dzamara’s march as an afterthought only proves that MDC-T are once again not at all sincere in their advocacy for human rights or Chizuze; neither do they feel any compassion for his wife and children.
Rather, Chizuze, just like Dzamara, is just another pawn, another excuse for a Kodak moment.
