The Sunday Mail
The Age of Isolation is well and truly over. The politics of bitterness are behind us.
What Zimbabweans need from VaMugabe is a responsible and tempered elder statesman who – if unable to at least apologise for the excesses of a criminal faction modelled around his wife – can try and counsel unity, hard work and peace.
Let’s observe a moment of silence for Paul Madyazvivi.
You see, Madyazvivi’s wife reportedly just left the man who is not formally employed, soon after she secured a teaching qualification.
Madyazvivi, we are told, sold a bunch of cattle so that he could pay fees for his wife, Ketina Murambiwa, to attend Masvingo Teachers’ College.
Now that she has qualified as a teacher, she prefers to build her life with a fellow teacher.
It is easy to feel sorry for the man. After all, he lovingly “upgraded” his wife and she turned around and told him that she was now too good for him.
But someone has to play Devil’s advocate.
Was she wrong? Is it not that she fell for this man because her horizons were still limited by her lack of exposure?
As Joice Mujuru would say, anga achiri kakutu kanga kasati kasvinura (she was still a puppy whose eyes had not yet opened) when she married this guy.
One could say they were compatible up to a certain point, after which she needed more from life than he could give.
She did not want to be a Caliban, that Shakespearean savage who tells his enslaver, “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/ Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you/ For learning me your language!”
This woman instead says, “You taught me language, and my profit on it is that I know now how I want to advance my life.”
It’s the cruel reality of education: with every lesson, the student takes another step on the road towards becoming master to his teacher.
Let us leave Madyazvivi and his troubles for a while and cross over to Italy, a nation that also deserves a moment of silence for the fall of AC Milan and the death of reason.
We hear Silvio Berlusconi is back in the thick of things, styling himself as an “elder statesman” ahead of elections that were due in that country this weekend.
Back in 2011, my colleague Farirai Machivenyika told me – when Mr Bunga Bunga was forced out of office and then subsequently barred from holding public office until 2019 – that the serial Prime Minister of Italy would bounce back.
I didn’t see that happening.
My views had nothing to do with the fact that I blame VaBerlusconi for running down AC Milan, doing for the Rossoneri what Cde Robert Mugabe did for Zimbabwe: taking it to its glory days and then hanging on long enough to take the shine away.
Rather, it was because I just could not see Italians – geniuses who have given the world pizza and pasta – trying to turn back the clock.
But here is Berlusconi, back in the spotlight and ready to become the kingmaker ahead of the lifting of his ban on public office next year.
Never mind the sexism, homophobia, fraud and all manner of inappropriateness associated with the man who took Italy into a recession and more importantly (for me at least), killed AC Milan.
Berlusconi is defying time, hoping for one last hurrah and one last mighty bunga bunga performance.
One critic has described VaBerlusconi as “yesterday’s choice for today’s Italians”.
And it would not be far off the mark to speak of the unfortunate VaMadyazvivi as “yesterday’s choice for today’s Ketina Murambiwa”.
Similarly, Zimbabweans have moved forward.
Cde Mugabe, likely acting as spokesperson for one Grace Mugabe, PhD, does not carry a message for today’s Zimbabweans.
Yes, we laud him for his advances in extending education to as many people as possible.
Now that those people have an education, they thank him for his efforts and are moving on to bigger and better things.
They want an upgrade that goes with their newly-minted sophistication and kindly ask VaMugabe to accept that their world is changing, has changed and will never be the same again.
The Age of Isolation is well and truly over. The politics of bitterness are behind us.
What Zimbabweans need from VaMugabe is a responsible and tempered elder statesman who – if unable to at least apologise for the excesses of a criminal faction modelled around his wife – can try and counsel unity, hard work and peace.
Brinksmanship and recklessness will not rebuild an economy in urgent need of the attentions of all well-meaning citizens.
There can be no bunga bunga approaches to our national affairs; all that ended in November 2017.
