The Sunday Mail
Elections always unfailingly produce rare and curious political creatures and species.
You might think you have seen it all only for another election cycle to remind you that you ain’t seen nothing yet.
I guess that is the reason they call election cycles the silly season of politics.
Some politicians will stop at nothing and stoop embarrassingly low just to clinch that ticket for political office.
During campaigns, they will obsequiously accost you in the streets, visit your home, tell you sweet nothings and even go to the unimaginable length of kissing your dogs or your kids to worm themselves into your good graces.
But, once elected, their aides will not allow you within a shouting distance of the monster cars they will be driving as creature comforts of their new office.
For them, they would have arrived, as being elected is the end in itself, and not the means to an end — which is serving the electorate.
You might have missed how a very senior South African politician picked the nose of a granny he intended to recruit to vote in the municipal elections held late last year. Kikikiki.
Only God knows if the trick actually worked.
Images that captured this quaint political stunt became the “photo de jour” of the campaign trail.
Clearly, politics is the gift that keeps on giving.
With 34 days left before the March 26 by-election, we are now seeing all manner of political creatures tumble from every nook and cranny.
And, already, we have seen more than our fair share of intrigue, chicanery, skullduggery, horse trading, paranoia and comedy.
Perhaps close to the nose-picking incident during the SA municipal elections’ campaign trail it is Tendai Biti’s diatribe at Newlands Shopping Centre last week that will probably rank as the most notable moemish of our own silly season.
It was one of the most bizarre moments you will ever hear or see, particularly from someone selling himself as a viable Member of Parliament for an area that has been left to rot away for the past two decades.
Even for someone like Bishop Lazi who has been studying political messaging for a while, the import of Biti’s message was totally lost to him.
Lest the message is lost in translation, the Bishop will reproduce part of his cryptic monologue below.
“Hama yangu ndisunge futi because kumashure uku kwakasenga uku; kunezvikwambo uku,” said a gloating Biti, while walking antsyly at the back of a pick-up truck.
“Nditori chidhoma chezvimwe zvinhu. So usadenhe hondo dzausingakwanise kupedza . . . Ndakasenga! . . . Isu tineshamwari kaisu. Isu tirimamonya pamamonya ipapo. Kwete mamonya a Soul Jah Love; mamonya feya-feya. Isusu kune kumwe kwatinofamba kwatinongonzi ‘Yah, Mr Bhiti, Mr Bhiti’ takutaura Oxford English. Zvino iwe unofunga kuti tiri vana John Chibadura. Ndisunge futi! . . . I dare you!”
Loosely translated, this is all what the garrulous and foul-mouthed Biti was simply saying: “My friend, I dare you to arrest me again because behind me are very powerful forces; behind me are real goblins. I am actually a ghost of the real goblins. So do not start wars that you cannot finish . . . I am dangerous! We have friends. We are counted among strongmen . . . Not those strongmen alluded by Soul Jah Love, but strongmen in fact and indeed! There are places where we visit where we are cordially greeted as ‘Yah, Mr Bhiti, Mr Bhiti’ and begin conversing using Oxford English. But you think we are just as ordinary chaps like John Chibadura . . . Arrest me again! I dare you!”
How this was supposed to resonate with voters in Harare East is a story for another day.
It, however, leaves one wondering.
If he has such powerful friends — obviously the US State Department and other hostile foreign governments — who are willing to show their might when he is arrested, why don’t they help him develop his constituency, which he has been minding for close to two decades?
The same goes for all his peers who are seeking re-election even after ineffectual successive tenures in the same constituencies.
But this was also quite tough but empty talk from Biti, especially coming from someone who was apprehended squealing, screaming and kicking by security agents on August 8, 2018 while trying to skip the border to seek political asylum in neighbouring Zambia. Kikikiki.
Don’t they say ambition is made of sterner stuff?
So this message could not possibly be targeted at a Government he fears and dreads; more so, a Government that has shown its mettle by successfully withstanding withering attacks from the same hostile puppeteers that handle the excitable politician.
One can then surmise that Biti was shooting across Chamisa’s bows by reminding him that by virtue of the backing of his powerful friends, he is an indispensable goblin for his new pet political project, the so-called Citizens Convergence for Change (CCC).
The decision by Chamisa to dissolve the new formation’s structures, which unsurprisingly came after procedural missteps in founding the new party, has unnerved and unsettled many of its top honchos, who fear the young, blundering and paranoid politician is busy centralising power in his office.
This is increasingly being reflected by another vice president of the party, Welshman Ncube, who is slowly drifting away.
His meeting with political nomad Thokozani Khupe in Bulawayo last week, which apparently was not sanctioned by the party, has ruffled so many yellow feathers, who are now baying for his blood.
You might remember that in Bulawayo, CCC ominously fielded two candidates for municipal elections in Ward 9 and Ward 26 after the Ncube faction accused Chamisa of trying to impose unpopular candidates.
So, while Biti claims a stake in the party by virtue of his so-called powerful friends, who view him as a viable alternative to Chamisa to push their agenda in Zimbabwe, Welshman is using the Matabeleland vote as leverage.
And then there are social media cultists like Alex Magaisa and Hopewell Chin’ono, who claim to be stockholders in the new project by virtue of their obscene skill to troll and bully Chamisa’s perceived enemies.
They also subtly emotionally blackmail the young politician by threatening to withhold their support and turning their blunt weapons on him.
The Bishop warned Chamisa before and he will warn him again: He should sleep with one eye open.
Today they will be clapping and ululating for him while they bide their time to stick their daggers in his back at the opportune time.
It’s a mess!
While so much intrigue and skullduggery is plaguing the fledgling and ill-fated party, its supporters are busy papering over cracks and putting band-aid on a fracture.
With time, it will all come crashing down — and spectacularly.
Remember what Bishop Lazarus has been saying all along?
Political ideologies, which encapsulate common aspirations and shared ideals, are the building blocks and glue that hold parties together.
Parties either rise or fall on their founding ideals.
At a press conference in the capital last week, CCC deputy spokesperson Gift Siziba bizarrely indicated that “any question about our character, form, values and strategic objectives is going to be answered in due course”, even as the party is already selling itself to the electorate.
So, how do you sell a doughy political formation to an ever-expectant electorate.
You surely cannot build a sustainable structure on shifting sands.
Matthew 7: 24 tells us that: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
This, fortunately, is the way the world works.
What good can come from such a disorganised, confused and disorderly lot, who gloat of enjoying support from hostile forces working against the national interest?
No matter how much they try, it is the national interest that will always prevail.
This land that the Lord committed to us will always be sacred.
We will, as we have always done, defend it with our own lives.
Bishop out!
