The Sunday Mail
Even though Jesus was/is God, and even though he was immaculately conceived, during the time he walked this earth ― more than 2 019 years ago ― he was a man of flesh and blood.
A man — despite having all the divinity — also had all human frailties, except sin. He could laugh, weep and whip (pun intended).
Yes, whip.
But these afflictions of human weakness were incredibly rare.
Perhaps this is why the verse “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) is the shortest in that voluminous tome called the Bible.
But Bishop Lazi is today fixated with the whipping part.
Again, this is captured in the Holy Book of John — in fact, John 2:14-15.
“In the temple courts, He (Jesus) found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and money-changers seated at their tables. So He made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. To those selling doves, He said, “Get these out of here! “How dare you turn My Father’s house into a marketplace! …”
At times, human beings can be so insufferable that they drive holy and pious man such as Bishop Lazi to extremes.
For this Bishop the unfortunate moment of epiphany came when he was a young teenage priest who had just returned from his studies overseas.
Having been sent to do some errands in downtown Salisbury (now Harare) by his superiors, some yobs thought the Bishop — who was then clad in his impeccably flowing cassock and a neck-band clerical collar — was fair game.
They also thought that the then wiry-thin young clergyman — by then not yet blessed with the bulbous body he now has — could have something valuable on him.
They couldn’t have picked the worst target.
At the exact moment the yobs decided to have a go on their supposedly hapless target, the Bishop instinctively delivered a combination of heavy punches, which were topped by a flawless swivel that violently delivered a calamitous mawashi geri (round kick).
The prey became the hunter, and vice versa.
As they say nowadays, “shiri yakabvuta rekeni”. Kikikiki.
Those who blinked missed the action.
Only the moaning and groaning pulped bodies of the ill-fated wannabe muggers were the tell-tale signs of the fatal misadventure.
You see, during my days overseas, I took up Kyokushin karate, which was founded by the South Korean, Mas Oyama, in order to escape boredom. Yes, the one currently practiced by Shihan Samson Muripo. Osu!
Critically, the fighting technique of this full-contact variant of karate is based on the Samurai Warriors’ principle of “Ichi geki hissatsu”, or “One strike, Certain death”.
Oyama mastered this art to such an extent that “if he got through to you, the fight was over”, “if he hit you, you broke”, “if you blocked his punch, your arm was broken or dislocated”, “if you didn’t block it, your rib was broken”.
They say because of his strength and skill, he became known as “the Godhand”.
So, in short, holy men are sometimes given to holy wrath.
And this week, the holy man clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
So, he has to whip and someone has to weep.
Sociopaths Over the past week, the Bishop has been musing on why there has been so much clamour about the recent broadband price hikes, especially from individuals he knows to be full-time trollers and social media bullies. Zimbabwean Twitter, as has been often noted by diplomats, is nauseatingly vile.
But a disgraced Professor called Jonathan Moyo is arguably the high priest of this newly found noxious religion of trolling.
Daily, he is always unloading dung-sized dross on these networking and blogging sites, from which his retinue of impressionable “dung beetles” — particularly the two-some of failed investigative journos — obligingly feed off and snowball into a stinking wrecking ball on social media platforms.
Given, Moyo is one of the most cerebral academic minds around, but his “medulla oblongata” — as singer Paul Matavire would wrongly call it — was so incompetently wired that it has to be condemned as criminal.
Each time his brain cranks up, the loose wires inexorably tangle in a perilous way that make the host bonkus. If he and his ilk had applied their minds, especially at times when their screws were not loose, to advance humanity, Zimbabwe would be an advanced country by now.
If you think that I am being unfair, I would have to call journalist-cum-lawyer Chris Mhike to my defence.
Having been on the receiving end of the raving professor’s article in The Herald issue of June 3 2013 titled “When lawyers become pedestrian for political expediency”, in which he was variously described as being part of “good-for-nothing lawyers” and “bush lawyers”, eight days later, Mhike — a former journalist with The Herald and Daily News — struck back. In his Op-Ed aptly titled “Prof Moyo & Co poisoning Zim society”, which was also published in The Herald, the fire-spitting ex-scribe took exception to the loose-tongued Professor’s propensity for being uncivil and dangerously toxic.
“Of course, Professor Moyo & Co are entitled to their opinions, but they must seriously re-consider the method and language of their communications. In placing their views in the public domain through the mass media, the expression of their views could easily adulterate the flow of information on these platforms from the mass communication form that it should be, into mass destruction of Zimbabwe’s social, moral or academic fabric. . .”
He added: “What is more worrisome though is the fact that the language used by Jonathan Moyo & Co in their attacks on lawyers, MDC politicians, and other citizens, is gravely harmful to the peace, integrity and harmony of Zimbabwean society. The culture of violence and insult on account of difference in opinion is poisonous to Zimbabwe’s sound societal configuration.”
And then the coup de grace from the learned former journo: “While well-educated and less educated Asians, Americans and Europeans make breakthrough inventions in the mobile phone and computer, aviation and motor car, rocket science, educational science and medical fields, and many other developmental sectors, some of our professors and high-ranking politicians here spend considerable time concocting noxious slurs.”
This is why, dear reader, some civilisations, buoyed by focussed academics, sent men to the moon half-a-century ago, but for us, cursed with the likes of Jonathan Moyo, haven’t been able to even re-invent the toothpick.
Most people ask, is Moyo crazy?
Well, the Bishop knows a tightly-kept secret of the Moyo/Mlevu clan that could help explain this congenial flaw, including help you connect the dots, but despite being fuelled by pious wrath, he will not be so uncivil to stoop so low and deliver for such a low blow.
At least not yet.
Maybe someday when he is goaded sufficiently enough he might be forced to spill the beans.
For now, I can only tell you than Moyo might have skeletons in his closet, but he is the biggest skeleton of them all.
I will also not worry myself with Moyo’s acolytes, who are joined to the hip to Moyo (no pun intended; please, don’t be dirty-minded) and sometimes operate his social media accounts. Those are family-less small boys who, by the time they will realise the futility of the irredeemable nutty professor’s pursuits, will have wasted a huge chunk of their lives.
For them, social media is now a loitering hall where they try to expunge and purgate their stained souls and consciences.
Also, for them, nothing positive will ever come out of/ from Zimbabwe.
Happiness and success is anathema.
In that 1997 Hollywood blockbuster called ConAir, there is a line which was delivered by Garland Greene — played by the inimitable Steve Buscemi — to try and describe people like Jonathan Moyo.
“He’s a font of misplaced rage. Name your cliché: mother held him too much or not enough, last picked at kickball, late night sneaky uncle, whatever. Now he’s so angry moments of levity actually cause him pain; gives him headaches. Happiness, for that gentleman, hurts.”
If you find yourself habitually trolling people, endlessly emitting negative energy and you are family-less (read unmarried and unattached), make an appointment at the nearest psychiatry — you need help.
I will leave you with the enlightening verse of Matthew 7: 17-19, “Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. . .”
Bishop out!
