Soko Chiwenga is naive, and will pay a heavy price for it. With the Mnangagwa Junta facing serious attention because of two atrocities inside of six months, Chiwenga may be about to be treated like Mugabe who suffered an orchestrated and devastating smear campaign at home and abroad.
On the international stage, Mugabe was accused of atrocities and of harbouring dynastic ambitions. You may recall how other people, of which I was a part, pointed out that Mugabe had had ample opportunity to start a political dynasty. With the exception of MaNgwenya Sabina Mugabe, a politician in her own right, none of the Mugabe family members was given any meaningful position of power and influence. Of course Patrick Zhuwao got a junior ministry at the dusk of the Mugabe presidency. It was actually a curse. Having been labelled a criminal, Soko Patrick is now in hiding, unlike the elder muera Gudo Robert Zhuwao.
The most consummate Mugabe in politics not called Robert Gabriel was Mbuya Sally. She was a colossus and a committed champion of the Zimbabwean cause. If you ask me, she was supremely qualified for the presidency let alone a ministerial position. In spite of her unstinting loyalty to the nation and her husband, she never ever was appointed to a government post. Even MaNcube Grace only entered politics after seemingly recruited as a battering ram for Mnangagwa. From the look of it, Mugabe was not even grooming his own children into politics. This is what left me mad. The whole narrative was a brazen lie. I spoke up not because I had become a latter-day Mugabe loyalist. The sinister falsehood was meant to make the forceful removal of Mugabe appear as an act of national salvation. It was cheap but enticing propaganda. I bought none of it.
For two consecutive years, I went to Zimbabwe. The disaster I saw on the ground was far too extensive to have been the work of a single person. It was a culmination of institutionalized madness, if not downright lawlessness. I made a point to visit Zvimba. What I saw along the way, from Borrowdale all the way to Zvimba told me that Mugabe might have been a problem but he was neither the beginning nor the end of it. The source of the disaster was fully institutional in its scope and operation. On coming back to America, I lost numerous friends when I tried to convince those that follow me that Mrs Grace Mugabe might have realized the same problem I had seen. In our naivety, we thought she was a crazy power grabber. She might have been deranged but I saw a national purpose in her madness.
Mrs Mugabe was a flame thrower, I can tell you that, but the resultant fire was meant to get rid of the filth that had ruined the nation. Her opponents saw this as a confirmation that a political dynasty was afoot. This was part of the international narrative. At work, my colleagues used to come to me to ask me in great puzzlement as to why Mugabe had married a crazy woman. I took my time in explaining to them that Zimbabwe needed her brand of madness to bring salvation to the nation. Sadly, when a lie is told over and over again, it becomes a self-evident truth. Lies tend to be resistant to logic and calm thoughts.
At home, we witnessed the same kind of madness. On numerous occasions, we were told that Mugabe was firmly against a Karanga presidency --- ironic since the Karanga identity is historically national rather than sectional or tribal. Of course, some of us objected to the sectionalization of a national identity, but Mnangagwa's foot soldiers, armed with picks, bows, arrows, makano and spikes did not want to hear any of it. To point out the fact that they were making a tribal claim to a national office was to earn the label of a tribalist. Ironic, is it not, that when people with openly confessed sense of tribal entitlement are fingered out resort to accuse the other party of tribalism? The element of shame was totally absent. Like the hounds that had tasted the blood of a wounded fox, people who had committed treason-level looting were baying for the blood of people caught stealing peanuts, spectacularly branded the criminal elements around the president.
Interestingly, there were people within that camp of vain tribalists who straddled both the international and home fronts in the assault on Mugabe. They were active on both fronts, courting the likes of Boris Johnston and that naive political dwarf Catriona Laing. The whole thing saw Lord Nicholas Soames suddenly appeared on the scene. One Hopewell Chin'ono says Mnangagwa's team, prior to staging its coup, appealed to this British aristocrat, the grandson of Winston Churchill and the son of the last British governor of colonial Rhodesia, Lord Christopher Soames, for approval. Whether Chin'ono is stating a fact or expressing his opinion, what remains significant is that the appearance of a British aristocrat was followed by a military coup that all the interested parties tried to paint not as a coup but an act of a military-led salvation. It was called a restoration of a legacy. Up until now, I am not sure what legacy the putchists were talking about.
Curiously, in the waning days of Mugabe's political demise, we saw him and his wife getting heckled to their faces. Neat placards roundly denouncing Mugabe and her husband were being held aloft in Mugabe's face. Such brazen disrespect smacked of a well-orchestrated attack. The sense of impunity, the kind previously looked upon as a suicidal invitation to annihilation, was stunning. It appeared as if the hecklers had some powerful backers. As it turned out, they had. For his part, President Mugabe was very naive in not seeing all these signs of treacherous subordinates roaming loose in the land.
At any rate, poor Chiwenga looks like he is falling prey to the same demonization strategy, a possible prelude to his downfall. Listen to the hecklers waving the same kind of mocking placards. The deployment of soldiers to mow down civilians is being blamed on poor Chiwenga while the beneficiary of the whole carnage appears afar and innocent whose soul is not only as soft as wool but as white as the wool upon bleaching. Even on the international scene, the narrative is reeling in his name in association with the crimes against humanity. Chiwenga had better abandon his military naivete. If he does not, he may end up paying a hefty prices, possibly of the ultimate character, that of his life.
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