Ignore Acie Lumumba to Neuter Him

Wiriamu Mutumanje, anozivikanwa nezita rekuti Acie Lumumba, has reportedly gone to hand himself over to the police because he insulted the president. I hope the president himself calls Charity Charamba so that the police can leave that boy alone.

Acie Lumumba has not said anything that can be said to be more shocking than the insults that have been hurled at President Mugabe before. In 1980, I watched as Mugabe's political opponents did the toi-toi routine as they marched to the Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield. They sang the kind of deeply insulting songs that make Acie Lumumba's two-word insult sound like the sweet singing of an angel from Heaven.

As an example, and I have had a hard time bringing this hateful song up, the ZANU(PF) supporters had a song with which they welcomed Mugabe and company back from exile. "Amai vaMugabe," so sang his supporters, "mwana wenyu adzoka! Mwana wenyu adzoka!" I stood by the side of Highfield Road as I watched the chanting people who were thankful that the war was coming to an end through peaceful means. The singers were expressing the joy they shared with Mugabe's mother because her son had come back from the raging war.

His political enemies turned that celebratory song into an insult targetted at Mugabe's elderly mother, Mbuya MaGumbo Bona. "Amai vaMugabe, ngomwa yenyu yadzoka! Ngomwa yenyu yadzoka!" Here they were using a song to mock Mugabe's mother by repeating the lie that Mugabe was impotent and incapable of siring children. Upon winning the elections, Mugabe did not go after the people who had insulted his mother in such a vile manner. Growing up, we knew that fighting for your mother's dignity was a must, especially if she was insulted. Mugabe had a very good reason to seek justice for the sake of his mother's impugned dignity. To his credit, he did not go out in search of the insolent goons. That was marvelous maturity on his part.

Now that an excitable boy has insulted him using the kind of language that is quite common in the street, I am taken aback that his charges, personified by Charity Charamba, want to go after the heedless but harmless kid. In the past few weeks, Acie Lumumba had become an object of public scorn. His lot in life was diminishing quite rapidly. I suspected he knew it, the reason he resorted to using filthy but common street language to tell off the president. By threatening to arrest him, a process that will entail putting him on parade, they risk making Acie Lumumba a figure of public sympathy, more so in light of the mysterious disappearance of the bedraggled and harmless Itai Dzamara.

If Acie Lumumba is a publicity hog, he sure seems to have charted his path way back to the moment he decided to assume the name of Acie Lumumba. Anyone vaguely familiar with African politics will surely have heard of Patrice Lumumba, an African nationalist who has since been lionized as a martyr of African freedom. If the government is careless in the way it handles Acie Lumumba, they may very well end up making a Patrice Lumumba out of porn-star Acie Lumumba. Assuming Acie Lumumba has harboured aspirations to be this generation's Patrice Lumumba, he stands a good chance of succeeding with the assistance of the ignorant members of our law enforcement agencies.

The government needs to leave that boy alone. His fifteen minutes of fame will quickly fade away. Before long, he will be a forgotten character or, worse than this, an object of public ridicule. Neuter Acie Lumumba by ignoring him.  That is how to deal with juveniles.  By all means, the government must avoid going the same terrible route it took on Itai Dzamara.