The Sunday Mail
AN inexorable rite of passage for a young boy growing up herding cattle in the village typically involved engaging in fistfights over anything and everything.
The senseless duels — either spontaneous or organised — were sometimes meant to break the maddeningly mundane routine of aimlessly following wondering beasts in the wilderness.
You see, the banality of herding cattle is the same as doing time: It is simply draining and requires superhuman discipline and patience.
Fistfights, therefore, occasionally provided the much-craved entertainment and drama, but only in instances where one was the gleeful spectator and not the unfortunate participant.
Of course, Bishop Lazi would know, as he was far too often at the receiving end of steely fists hardened into wrecking balls by hard labour and backbreaking village work.
Not surprisingly, village boys always fancied themselves when it came to fistfights.
But, as the television — and with it the popular kung fu movies — became popular, it spawned a new class that challenged the status quo in the form of city boys who visited during school holidays and masqueraded as martial arts experts. There was this particularly cocky city chap who, when he came for the holidays, used to prance around rubbing people the wrong way all the time.
He claimed he could use his karate skills to effortlessly knock out any challenger.
In order to showcase his exaggerated machismo, he used to walk around with his chest pumped and hands mechanically flailing by his side as an overweight Japanese sumo wrestler.
He would also routinely and clumsily demonstrate his supposedly choreographed karate moves, which were accompanied by those yodelling sounds — awoo!!! hiya!!! — that were so familiar in Bruce Lee movies.
No one really took him seriously.
However, there is always that one day when your ancestors and guardian angels seem to take some time off and leave evil spirits and misfortune to torment you. Kikikiki.
And for this chap, it couldn’t have happened on a worst day — the day when all villagers gathered to dip their cattle.
It so happened that in the melee of trying to corral the animals into the diptank, the city boy unfortunately picked a fight with the village boy who was known for packing the most devastating punches.
It quickly escalated and before our city friend could assume the famed “kung fu” praying-mantis posture, his opponent was already menacingly charging like an elephant bull in musth. The village boy was a master of the sweet science.
He began landing punches as a painter would stroke his canvass or as Dominic Benhura would sculpt his stones.
Up until that time, Bishop Lazi didn’t know that when a black man takes a heavy beating he can also turn black and blue, as did our friend. In no time, the city boy was floored and that marked the end of the fabled kung fu moves. Kikiki.
We did not see him again during the holidays.
Bankrupt
Bishop Lazarus always finds himself thinking back on this tragic but comical episode each time he sees the opposition MDC-A, which seems to be trapped in perpetual election mode, taunting ZANU PF even when the next elections are still far off.
They forget that the hiatus before elections is a time for nation-building, and not for politicking. There is always a season and time for everything.
The time for electioneering will surely come, and the opposition knows, as everyone does, that when ZANU PF, which has mastered the sweet science of politics over the past 57 years, cranks up its vintage political machine, it naturally sends shockwaves on the local political landscape.
And usually the outcome is quite predictable. The Bishop really doesn’t know what sin Zimbabwe committed to deserve such an abjectly directionless, rudderless and clueless opposition that is bereft of any meaningful ideological grounding.
They actually do not know that opposition politics is not about opposing anything and everything, but offering a sellable and attractive political alternative within the confines of the national interest.
It not only enrichens political discourse, but provides a diverse marketplace of ideas that can be used to move the country forward. Effective opposition politics is also about having the “national consciousness” to enable, and not disable, the Government of the day by providing the necessary guardrails to direct the nation-building project.
You should have seen how the opposition revelled in childish jokes about the new $50 note and inexplicably became mum when the country received a record delivery of two million vaccine doses last week.
It just shows both classless immaturity and crass naiveté unbefitting of candidates that consider themselves putative future leaders of the State.
Unbeknown to them is the fact that President ED has made tremendous headway in dealing with the cash shortages, which was one of his key campaign promises.
It is never about the nominal value of money, but its transactional value.
Do not let them fool you: Plans for future higher denominations already exist, but the priority for now is to anchor the stability of the new currency. Of course, monetary authorities are mindful of the need to also promote cashless transactions through digital platforms.
Cash is gradually going out of fashion around the world.
All these are dynamics that are considered in Statecraft. But by pooh-poohing and trivialising critical projects of national importance, the opposition is fatally missing the big picture.
For instance, the success of the local vaccine acquisition and rollout programme, which is financed from our national purse, is symbolic of the runaway success ED has had in transformative projects around the country — be it Gwayi-Shangani Dam, Harare-Beitbridge Highway, Hwange Power Station Unit 7 and 8, modernisation of Beitbridge Border Post, the new Parliament Building and success in restoring the country’s food security, to mention but a few.
This what people vote for, and, most importantly, it shows commendable movement and progress from the inertia of the past to the promise of the future.
But there is another silent revolution that is happening in the countryside and winning the hearts and minds of many communities.
For those who keep track, devolution is delivering tangible and life-changing projects on people’s doorsteps in a manner never before imagined by communities.
And with every successful project that is being delivered, the odds are being heavily stacked against the opposition.
This is ominous for them, but they will never know as they are mostly preoccupied with frolicking on social media, especially Twitter. Unfortunately, they do not know how thin, and predominately alien, their audiences are, which means they are unlikely to tip the vote in any meaningful way come the next elections.
This could, and will, be fatal.
Social commentator Alexander Rusero described the current state of opposition forces in a more succinct way.
“We have a crippled opposition. We have an opposition that is in the intensive care unit. We have a partisan civil society; we have a civil society that is always pro-opposition . . . We do not even have meaningful trade unions that speak to issues of trade unions – it’s always about politics; and we do not have even meaningful student activism that speaks to the issues of students – it’s always politics. So, in those circumstances, we have a crisis of polarity in Zimbabwe . . . We do not have certain elements of convergence to define our national question,” he told a local community radio station. But the people, who are the ultimate arbiters in political courts, are not fools.
They can certainly tell fools from the wise.
As Ecclesiastes 10:1-3 says, “As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honour. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are.”
The opposition might not be smart enough to see and comprehend how the pieces of the puzzle are being moved, but when the picture eventually comes together, as it certainly will, it might be too little too late for them.
There is a siesmic shift underway that might radically change the dynamics of local opposition politics for generations to come.
Bishop out!
