Isusu vaera Moyo we were never rulers. Yes, that is correct. We did not rule this country and the sections that were truncated off in Berlin without our input. What we did, however, was lead the people. As Fela later reiterated in his own unique way, to be an effective leader, it is imperative to fully understand where the people want to go. For effective leadership, the only way to know what the ordinary people want is to let them have their say without any fear of reprisals. While they freely express the desires of their hearts, genuine leaders listen in a state of humility. That is what leaders do.
I have been prompted to write this after watching Vice President Mnangagwa's speech in which he was bragging about his party and leader. "Tiri kutonga! Tichitonga! Togotonga vamwe muchingovukura!" he bragged. Right there are the words of a man who is utterly clueless when it comes to leadership. He boasted of his party and Mugabe's rulership. The voices of the people, Mnangagwa equates them to the yapping of dogs.
It is important, very important indeed, to note that he was quite emphatic about ruling the country. Not once, in the video clip doing the rounds did the ineloquent vice president mention leading the nation. He seems to be all about ruling. To rule a nation is not the same as leading that nation.
All one needs to do is take a look at what has happened to Zimbabwe, a nation that once had great potential and a bright future. Tragically, we placed the stewardship of the nation in the hands of clueless but power-hungry people who happened to look like us. We overestimated their capacity to think. Where we thought they were decent fellow Zimbabweans, we have ended up with remarkably insolent rulers, all 30 centimetres, who dismissively characterize our calls for basic leadership the barking of dogs.
Mnangagwa has unwittingly revealed to the nation that he aspires not to be a leader but a ruler. Zimbabwe does not need a ruler. We have been through that path more than once in the long history of our ancient nation. In each and every epoch we have been saddled with a ruler, we have found our lives being ground into pulp as a result of despotism. Rulers are, as a general rule, liable to despotism. Where leaders are beneficent, rulers are toxic.
Mnangagwa ought to be ashamed of himself, but then he found his political footing not as his own man but the bodyguard of another man. The job of a bodyguard does not demand much in terms of brain power, even passably decent oratory skills are not needed by one to be a good bodyguard. Pfungwa dzehuranda hadzinetse kuona. His insolence betrays his poor understanding of what leadership entails as well as exposes his low station in life in spite of his education and perfumed neck.
You can take a muranda to school and give him all sorts of degrees that come with hifalutin titles, it is all well and good. However, that will not change what is between the ears of that muranda. In the moment he loses his guard, he will resort to his native state of mind, that of a mere quisling. It is no different from training a dog to perform fancy tricks not typical of a dog. Actually a more fitting analogy of that of a parrot that can be trained to moor like a cow or whistle like a village drunkard. No matter how good that parrot is good at mimicry, no sane person will ever look at it and then conclude that it is a cow or a village drunkard. Likewise our educated rulers and their imperial pretensions.
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