It’s now time to Gamatox the weevils

BY the time former information czar Nathan Shamuyarira breathed his last on June 4, 2014, the ruling party, ZANU PF, was already in the throes of bristling internecine political contestation and strife.

During this politically tumultuous period, tempers were boiling over and ugly spats were increasingly playing out in public.

At Cde Shamuyarira’s burial at the national shrine three days later, former President Robert Mugabe publicly admitted before rolling cameras and eager notetakers gathered at the sombre event that the party had indeed become infested with weevils (zvipfukuto).

Well, for some, especially those born in cities, it was probably their first time hearing about these creatures.

But for those of us born or raised in the village, we knew full well what the wordsmith and poetic storyteller really meant by that metaphor.

You see, weevils are black or reddish-brown bugs that are so tiny as to be imperceptible.

They have long and slender snouts that they use to bore into wood and grain.

Don’t let their sizes fool you — Over time, they cause devastation at an unprecedented and unimaginable scale.

Their most lethal attribute is their ability to stealthily burrow into maize or wood and gnaw away at its innards without being detected or attracting unwanted attention.

And it is always impossible to establish where they would have come from.

If you store away untreated grain, you run the risk of only recovering hollowed out shells that can neither be consumed nor sold. Oftentimes, we would be peppered with an itchy powder from the gnawed wood that will be issuing from the tiny holes in roof beams.

The net effect of the progressive industrious work by the weevils was to undermine the integrity of the roof structure by weakening the beams.

This precisely explains why the roof structure is routinely changed to prevent it from collapsing.

However, every villager knew then, as they still know now, that the most effective way to eliminate the destructive pests was through using the tried-and-tested pesticide called Gamatox.

It worked like a charm.

So, when Cde Mugabe said ZANU PF had been infested by weevils on that wintry Saturday afternoon in 2014, all he meant was that there were people in the ruling party who were behaving like these bothersome pests by eating away at its heart and soul, which had the potential to destroy the movement.

However, by virtue of its rich past, solid structures and leadership, as well as enduring principles and ethos, the ruling party always knows how to reinvent itself, thus ensuring its longevity.

The weevils in our midst

The Harare City Council has unfortunately found itself crawling with weevils over the past two decades.

The city, which we had come to respect and admire before it was taken over by the opposition at the turn of the millennium, has effectively been hollowed out.

We are confronted by this unpleasant fact and reality at every turn and every single day of our lives.

From the crumbling council offices, which are just but a metaphor of the state of affairs in Harare; the cratering roads; dysfunctional streetlights; rotten bus termini; mountains of uncollected garbage; perennially dry taps; poorly equipped clinics and schools; eternally flowing rivers of sewage in communities; decrepit community halls; the constantly sprouting informal settlements, among many other disasters in the capital precincts, the evidence of decay is all around us.

At least we now know how it came to this, thanks to the inquiry that was ordered by President ED in May 2024.

Thankfully, after a nine-month investigation, the Justice Maphios Cheda-led commission of inquiry has completed gathering all the evidence it needs.

And boy oh boy, we got more than we bargained for.

Justice Cheda and his team — God bless them for their service! — should be commended for keeping their cool even as they were subjected to testimonies that were too shocking to be true.

After undergoing a nine-month experience that can be best described as traumatic, they might probably need the services of an exorcist or therapist who specialises in treating post-traumatic stress order (PTSD). Kikikikiki.

As skeletons continued to tumble, one after the other, from the council’s closet, we were at first outraged.

What followed next was shock until our senses became numb at the sheer scale and scope of the malfeasance and misfeasance at the local authority.

To all intents and purposes, the colourful testimonies painted the picture of Town House as a political brothel that is invariably attracting shameless political  charlatans whose sole motive is to enrich themselves.

How else can we explain the behaviour of councillors who are prepared to splurge ZiG230 million, roughly US$16 million, on workshops in an eight-month period between December 2023 and July 2024 while failing to provide basic services to ratepayers?

How else can we explain the logic behind paying a town clerk of an impoverished local authority close to US$30 000 in salaries and perks so that he can fly to the majestic Dubai for holiday while leaving behind desperate residents in the rotting city that he superintends?

To top it all, we have a mendacious mayor, Jacob Mafume, who had to be fined for misleading the commission after sending it on a wildgoose chase. Kikikikiki.

Bishop Lazi cannot possibly exhaust the list of egregious transgressions and what has gone wrong at the City of Harare on these pages.

It would take a lifetime.

What’s worse is the fact that the councillors are not only clueless and inept, but unaccountable as well, for no one really knows their sponsoring parties, especially after the split of the opposition CCC, which was orphaned by its former leader Nelson Chamisa when he retired from active politics on January 25 last year.

Since then, the party has been paralysed by different claims to leadership from characters such as Welshman Ncube, Jameson Timba, et al.

It’s a mess!

So, it is fair to say the councillors representing the opposition are on a frolic of their own, which explains their self-serving actions.

Wielding the sword,

delivering justice

Those who live in the city and seldom visit other areas where ED’s transformative projects are seen, felt and realised would be forgiven for being sceptical about the              transformation being experienced in Zimbabwe.

All they know are the dispiriting substandard and abysmal services that they are being subjected to by the city fathers.

Nothing works in Harare anymore.

But, as Bishop Lazarus observed some time ago, the opposition ironically derives political capital from a declining service delivery and a decaying city as they conveniently weaponise it to create disaffection with the ruling ZANU PF Government.

But they will soon come to grief.

Their comeuppance is nigh.

Romans 13:1-4 counsels: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

“Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.

“For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

The Bishop does not want to come across as presumptuous, but if council mandarins think they will survive what is sure to come, especially after revelations of the extent of sleaze plaguing the Harare City Council, then they are hopeless optimists.

ED is dead set on ensuring that we have a capital city that works again.

All it takes is to fumigate the council to rid it of the weevils.

Harare will be restored once again.

Bishop out!