By Tanonoka Joseph Whande
The Flame Lily has long been portrayed and accepted as Zimbabwe’s national flower. It is a bright and joyous blossom that brightens Zimbabwe’s landscape, just as much as the people of Zimbabwe themselves do.
I look at the Flame Lily and I see the green, green grass of home.
I see the yellow that enables combustion yet is more associated with gentleness, amusement, spontaneity and optimism – the very characteristics of my Zimbabwean people.
The red is the fire that warms, protects but dares to destroy, if not handled well.
Nothing depicts Zimbabwe’s jubilant diversity and sad situation more than the Flame Lily, whose trinity of colours (red, green and yellow) all found their way onto the national flag but for non-Mugabe reasons.
The yellow flames that enable combustion and the red that is the fire…Oh, my God!
Our cabinet is in flames; our government is smoldering. Zimbabwe Ruins, indeed!
We have a president in distress while his wife is distressing.
Grace Mugabe jumped the queue onto the political stage with no intention to heal Zimbabwe, like a so-called ‘First Lady’ would normally do.
Feeling and recognizing her own inadequacy and fake existence at the level she finds herself, the ignorant lass came down on Zimbabwe with a vengeful and sadistic intent to divide the nation as she seeks to harvest what she did not sow.
The transition from cross-border trader to State House should have come with a psychiatrist. Now she is on a rabid run against people who owe her nothing but to whom she owes everything.
Grace Mugabe knows no lands; she was nowhere near the fields but has chased away all the farmers and now wants the country itself.
In her misguided, reckless behavior, she has split the nation into tiny factions; she has split the cabinet and party and has caused havoc within the civil service community and further outward…all because of no other reason than that she presumably sleeps with Robert Mugabe. She has no other qualification.
And so this beautiful country is being held hostage by a little greedy girl who married an extravagant despot who has no feeling for the people from whom he continues to steal.
Until about two years ago, Joyce Mujuru and Emerson Mnangagwa were the most likely successors to the aged dictator in Zanu Pf.
In the party, Mujuru had far more popularity behind her than my home boy Mnangagwa.
But Mnangagwa managed to use a clique made up of Mugabe’s staunch supporters and some family members, including Grace Mugabe herself.
As soon as she demanded and was given a doctorate, Grace started gnawing at Mujuru with Mnangagwa stroking the fires – happy to see the misfortune that was befalling his latest hindrance to his ascension to the presidency.
Mujuru was hounded out of both the vice presidency and the party.
For a few months, Mnangagwa wallowed in the belief that he was finally home, that his years and years of patience and loyalty to Mugabe had paid off.
Now Grace Mugabe and her G40 faction have turned the tables on Mnangagwa and his Team Lacoste.
When Stupid meets Lawyer and Professor, Stupid does not become a lawyer or a professor but Lawyer and Professor become stupid. It pains me; it really does. Why are Mnangagwa and Jonathan Moyo all beholden to Grace Mugabe, educated and with a history in the party as they have?
The party and cabinet that Grace Mugabe split in half a year ago are now split into two more halves, or quarters, if you will.
The burning tongues of the Flame Lily!
With Mujuru out of the picture, it is now G40 versus Team Lacoste as cabinet ministers are in open warfare against each other and protocol be damned.
Among those feeding coal into the engine is Jonathan Moyo, the mosquito that everyone has unsuccessfully tried to swat flat. He recently referred to Mnangagwa as no crocodile but just an ambitious lizard.
People of consequence are spooning each other’s eyeballs out of the sockets to please an ignorant village girl. Is this what education does to people? Is this what ‘bottom power’ does to men?
Last week Jonathan Moyo (G40), the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, accused War Veterans minister Chris Mutsvangwa (Lacoste) of stealing women’s knickers and petticoats from laundry lines for resale during the war of liberation.
Mutsvangwa hit back on radio saying he could not possibly have done that with guns and bombs exploding everywhere and wondered to whom he would sell such items and using what currency in the bush.
Mutsvangwa then accused Moyo of being the illegitimate child of the late nationalist Ndabaningi Sithole, the founding president of Zanu before the ‘PF’ was added to it.
Mutsvangwa went as far as organizing war veterans to block Moyo from attending a Zanu-Pf Politburo meeting but Moyo attended after Youth and Empowerment Minister, Patrick Zhuwao, (G40), threatened to organize youths to engage both Mutsvangwa and the war veterans.
Now we hear the so-called war veterans have expelled Mutsvangwa from their organization, all to please Grace. I swear, political prostitutes do not surprise me anymore.
During that face-off outside Zanu-Pf Headquarters, Hurungwe East MP, Sarah Mahoka, an ally of Grace Mugabe (G40), ominously warned Vice President Mnangagwa to his face: “Stop your people (or else) you will die in your house. These things you are seeking will get you killed.”
Get you killed? By who and why? Die in your house? Like Solomon Mujuru did?
Although Mnangagwa used Grace to rid himself of Mujuru, it is Grace who used Mnangagwa. Grace now considers Mnangagwa a foe; she wants to succeed her husband.
The same tactics used by Mnangagwa, Grace and Jonathan Moyo against Joyce Mujuru are now being used by Grace and Jonathan Moyo against Mnangagwa.
Meanwhile, Sports Minister Makhosini Hlongwane, and deputy ministers Tapiwa Matangaidze and Annastacia Ndhlovu – all G40 – wrote a letter to National Commissar, Saviour Kasukuwere, and to the other Vice-President, Phelekezela Mphoko, accusing Mnangagwa and his loyalists of harassing them because they did not want to belong to Team Lacoste.
It is interesting, is it not, to see cabinet ministers reporting one vice president to the other? Such is the decay in Zimbabwe today. No solid line between government and ruling party.
In another bout, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa locked horns in public with Zhuwao, whose real and only qualification is that he is Mugabe’s nephew.
Chinamasa had reportedly announced that part of the indegenisation requirements, particularly one that demands 51% local ownership, had been suspended to attract investors. Zhuwao, who had neither been informed nor consulted, went public and called Chinamasa ‘treacherous’.
“If we implement the policy successfully as we are going to do over time,” Chinamasa rubbed more salt into the wound, “there may be no need for a Ministry of Indigenisation.”
That really would be welcome because Zimbabwe does not need to indigenise “air, grass, birds and swamps”.
Mugabe and his thieves have stolen everything and are now searching for every cent they dropped into the mud.
We are paying for Mugabe’s delusions of self-importance and invincibility. We are paying for the sadistic, insatiable greed of Grace Mugabe.
Last week, Mugabe declared that he will rule until God beckons him yonder.
The Lord is welcome to call His servant any time. We sincerely accept that as part of our destiny and covenant with our Creator.
I am sure, though, that many Zimbabweans, Christian as we are, would willingly contribute towards bus fare for Mugabe’s one-way trip out of here because we really do not need him in Zimbabwe except, maybe, the morons at the African Union and at SADC.
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