MUCKRAKER is closely following with the keenest of interest the case in which a man, who is claiming to be the illegitimate son of the former Owner of the country, Robert Mugabe, is demanding a share of the late strongman’s vast estate.
In these hard times (to which Mugabe himself contributed generously), anyone can do with anything extra (which makes the alacrity with which our socialites have been accepting Cde Wickednell’s dirty gifts understandable). So, it is quite perfect that Cde Tonderai Mugabe is now seeking to get something out of the jaw-dropping loot that is Mugabe’s estate.
It is very possible that Tonderai is indeed Mugabe’s biological son. Many people have been wondering aloud why it took this long for the “boy” to come out. Muck understands their concerns, but the reality of the situation is that in the climate of fear that has persisted in this country right from the war days right to this very day, things like that shouldn’t be unusual.
It just goes to expose how thick the layers of insulation the Ownership — which is mistaken for leadership — in this country exists under. It highlights the ordeal that ordinary people endure in trying to get in touch with these people, and still fail. Worse still, when the Owners decide to live hypocritical lives like Mugabe did.
It is this same layer of insulation that also keeps away the Ownership from appreciating the harsh realities of life of the ordinary person. No one can tell what Tonderai’s mother, Hilda Maeka, went through as she may have tried to reach Mugabe — a purportedly happily married man, a devout Catholic for that matter — with his illegitimate son.
In such cases, those men and women whose everyday job is getting angry and furious on the behalf of the Ownership, would have something to excel on.
The jejune explanation proffered for keeping Tonderai out of the family was that Hilda and her son could not be traced in the aftermath of the Chimoio bombing — what a puerile excuse!
The simple explanation is that Tonderai put the man in a very difficult situation — in moral dilemma. So, he had to be conveniently kept away and the resources for doing exactly that were unlimited.
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So, it happened exactly like that. Only the addlepated should believe the Chimoio bombing story.
War and rape
There is also another more credible explanation that Muck is tempted to fondle. Those who care to know will tell you that women were being raped by the leadership during the war; and it is still happening right to this very day (albeit in slightly changed circumstances). Listen even to survivors like Cde Oppah, Cde Teu and others.
Also read the vivid and harrowing accounts by survivors like Cde Fay Chung. Whenever “chefs” visited camps, girls would be heard shrilling in the middle of the night like piglets being dragged out for slaughter. Then there was fear, hunger and everything that also worked against the female targets of these rapes, contributing to the pull and push factors where “consent” was supposedly extracted.
Naturally, children born out of such (violent) encounters would certainly have been an embarrassment after the war, especially to our Owners.
Get it from Muck, sex was serious business during the war just as the war itself. In fact, sex was a parallel war in its own right as men sought to “liberate” as many women as possible.
One of the reasons Rugare Gumbo ended up in those underground jails in Mozambique was because of his relationship with Chung. They were left fuming and stewing over the matter, so it was not unexpected that Gumbo ended up facing all sorts of allegations.
Post-war ‘liberation’
This, Muck knows for a fact. After the war, it was no longer possible for our new Owners to pick up girls off the parade just like they used to do during the war, so a certain trust — a supposed beauty pageant — was set up to facilitate access by the chefs to as many women as possible. The matron of that trust was declared a liberation war heroine upon her death a few years ago — a heroine indeed.
With this background in mind, it should be quite clear why Tonderai could not be conveniently introduced to the family over the past decades. What a real fly in anointment!
Sad, very sad …
So, former vice-president Cde Phelekezela Report Mphoko finally decided to die in India where he was searching for specialist medical attention because the government in which he was such an important figure for decades was incapable of providing any?
Muck has always pointed out that the regime has behaved worse than an occupation force. The plunder has been so wanton that anything and everything that was not fixed to the ground has been looted. Health services ought to be among the most basic of services available after the reeling Party has been in power for decades, but not in the hereabouts.
Meanwhile, Muck is impressed by the show of mourning the Party has mobilised following Mphoko’s death. Being the cheap type of person that he was, he comes handy when the Party is in search of appropriate popinjays for its shows — even emerging as vice-president in 2014, to the surprise of most Zimbos, and to the chagrin of real ex-Zipra cadres.
When the coup took place, spineless as he always had been, the chancer correctly realised that it was too dangerous for him to claim the top post, made vacant by his colleague’s appropriate dismissal on grounds of lacking probity and then the coup.
After that the thoroughly corrupt chap went into well-deserved oblivion. Since his death, the reeling Party has been seized with the task of ensuring that the kill-joy voices of ex-Zipra cadres, who saw him for the “Mboko” that he was: a lazy and dangerous sell-out are never heard. Having been declared a national hero, he is being praised up to heaven as an exemplary leader, leaving the people of Matabeleland to wonder against all the wonders in the whole wide world. That is the reeling Party for you!
Muck hopes and prays that on his deathbed in India, Mphoko was able to do the right thing: tell his son Siqokoqela, who his birth mother is or was. That is how selfish and cold-hearted some of these politicians can be!
Harsh realities
At the weekend, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus for Moscow as his regime finally crumbled after a 13-year resistance. The triumph of the opposition fighters brought an end to the 54-year-old Assad dynasty which had been abusing Syrians since 1970.
This is yet another free lesson to those who are capable of learning that all unpopular regimes will eventually come to an end, no matter how cunning and fearsome they might appear from the outside.
This should be an encouragement for all the people in the world, Zimbos included, who are under oppressive regimes that — at the appointed time of the Lord — their yokes of bondage would eventually be broken.
It is also a free lesson to those whose job is defending and propping up unpopular regimes that when the time of the end finally arrives, the criminals flee with their loot and the immediate members of their own households only, leaving the praise-singers, arse-lickers and the bum-shakers behind. Such are the harsh realities of life!
