Feigning victim to woo funding

SUDDENLY, there is a desperation in opposition politics to provoke ZANU PF, especially the person of President Mugabe and his wife, to recklessly poke government in the face, with activists stopping short of handcuffing themselves and forcing police officers at the nearest police station to lock them in cells so that in the ensuing, organised media uproar waiting outside, they would hopefully revive the opposition’s dying political fortunes and attract donor funding to rescue them from collapse staring them in the eyes.
You see it in the utterances and actions of opposition politicians and the editorial in ‘independent’ papers.
For example, the irresponsible use of the word ‘uprising’ in most stories in the ‘independent’ papers in connection with the relocation of vendors from the streets of Harare.
Ordinarily, the word is so strong it requires not only sufficient evidence to back it, but a colossal sense of responsibility to use it.
A descent into chaos is not something that one would wish for their country, no matter how justifiable the outcome promises to be.
But it appears when the ‘independent’ media use the word, they wish the country descends into that state of chaos; even subtly goading the vendors to make the last stand against government to become heroes.
In other countries and circumstances, it is treasonous to urge citizens to rise up against a lawfully elected government.
But the papers don’t care.
They are consumed by this desire to be arrested and become heroes in the eyes of their sponsors, our former colonisers.
That way, they attract the attention and possibly get funding.
We used to joke in 2008 that if the British invaded the country, which Tony Blair admitted he had seriously mooted and which the ‘independent’ press salivated to happen, they would airlift their citizens out and there was no guarantee that the miserable people at the independent media houses would not die with us in the ensuing pandemonium.
If they thought the British cared about them, that was when they would have seen they didn’t.
War is the ultimate recourse to settle irreconcilable disagreements.
When the Shonas and Ndebeles were called to arms to fight the whiteman during the First Chimurenga, it was the last resort.
The whiteman crushed the uprising.
When there was another call to arms during the Second Chimurenga, war was also the last recourse.
The uprising prevailed.
But of course the most desperate case for recognition is the alleged abduction of Itai Dzamara.
They say he was a journalist, but some of us are still to see anything that he wrote.
If you remember his one man protest theatrics in Africa Unity Square a few years ago, you will be forgiven if you thought you were dealing with an eccentric.
Dzamara is hardly of any political value to anybody, except perhaps to the MDC and its tumbling fortunes, to be a target for abduction.
How anybody could want to abduct him and for whatever reason is incomprehensible.
They should have looked for a credible person, someone with something to respect.
Somebody joked that even if Dzamara was alleged to have run away with his wife, he would not believe it because Dzamara did not have such a capacity!
But if the unsubstantiated talk doing the rounds is anything to go by, that it needed an eccentric to feign their own abduction and go into hiding until ZANU PF was toppled from power, Dzamara fitted the bill.
Ugandan-born black Anglican Bishop of York, John Sentamu threw away his dog collar in 2007and swore not to wear it until President Mugabe was gone.
He sold his soul hoping to land the position of Archbishop of Canterbury and become head of the Anglican Church.
Well, he lost the gamble to Justin Welby and eight years later, President Mugabe is still there, poor bishop!
They say the poor bishop quietly took back his collar and he does not want to answer questions about the aborted gamble.
Very soon, Dzamara might be confronted with a similar predicament, to quietly come out of hiding and rejoin his family in Budiriro.
Or, if it is true his application for a visa to go the UK was rejected several times in the past, this is finally his chance to obtain one.
While there might not be anything criminal about the Daily News headline yesterday, June 18 ‘Zimbabwe on Brink of Total Collapse’, there is a sickening dishonesty about it you wonder if it is the same Zimbabwe you are living in they are talking about.
This is the problem that we face, people creating their own false reality about the country and selling it to the outside world for a dime.
Just because a few people are selling tomatoes on the streets in Harare does not take the country to the brink of collapse.
If that was the case, how then would one describe the situation with Boko Haram in Nigeria?
How would they describe the situation in the east of the DRC along the border with Rwanda and Uganda?
There are many little things about ourselves some people find difficult to understand.
For example the intense hatred that some people have for anything Zimbabwean because ZANU PF is in power.
If you asked them why they think it’s better to herd cattle in Mozambique than to do the same back at home, they can’t explain it.
If you told them their wish to have the white farmers return, instead of allowing the resettled farmers time to learn and eventually produce the same results, is the same as calling for the return of the whiteman, they are shocked and say no, no, no; no reasonable African would desire that.
A desperation has crept into opposition politics, a sort of madness that doesn’t care if the country is reduced to rubble, because they can’t believe their spectacular failure.