Source: All talk and no trousers | Daily News
THE Pfeesident is becoming a little too predictable. Last week, he left Zimbabwe, perish the thought, in the throes of a very devastating cyclone on account of a gratuitous state visit to United Arab Emirates.
Granted, Cyclone Idai was an act of God which had earlier been predicted. However, the regime in its incompetent wisdom, did precious little to warn the residents in the affected areas or even evacuate them.
When the cyclone was gathering momentum and beginning to wreak havoc, the pfeesident, in teeth of better judgment, still decided to leave the country for one of his dud junkets.
No sooner had he landed in Abu Dhabi than the situation back home reached crisis point.
When every sane Zimbabwean was asking themselves why the pfeesident flew out of the country in the first place, leaving a crisis in his wake, we were told that he was cutting short his visit to attend the burgeoning crisis back home.
His propaganda handlers and State-owned media went into an overdrive trying to paint the pfeesident as a caring man.
The Horrid reported in a very telling headline: “ED returns to be with his people”.
Even against the backdrop of wholesale bereavement, one was tempted to laugh at such especially mischievous headlines.
It could have hoodwinked the gullible among us only that this is the second time that the that the pfeesident has had to “cut short his visit” to attend to a crisis back home.
Well, a disconcerting pattern is forming here where the pfeesident leaves the country in the heap of a crisis only to “cut short” his supposed visits on account of the same crisis.
In one tweet that cannot be verified, the pfeesident tweeted that his “thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by Cyclone Idai.”
To which one Twitter user rejoined: “People do not need thoughts and prayers from a leader. They need leadership. Man-up Cde!”
Touché! Quite and apposite rejoinder would you not say?
His wife who is, as a matter of course presented as the mother of the nation and caring, could not even cut short her visit to New York.
Was this not the right opportunity to show her motherhood or compassion at all for those who lost their lives and property. See? You can never fake humanness, the truth will always out.
The sitting pfeesident
Upon his return from the UAE, the pfeesident visited the cyclone-hit areas to see for himself the extent of the damage wrought by Cyclone Idai.
He lurched onto another banana peel and PR scandal when a presidential sofa was seen being delivered to the disaster-hit Chimanimani.
While it is accepted opinion that the pfeesident is incompetent, so much so that he cannot walk and whistle at the same time, this is a new low.
One wonders and wonders aloud as to why would the pfeesident have his sofa airlifted to an area heavy with death.
Instead of being seen leading the rescue efforts, the pfeesident went to Chimanimani to enjoy the comfort of the presidential seat, the seat that could have waited for him in his air-conditioned office.
Are we beginning to see the reason why some quarters have argued that the pfeesident pushed out his predecessor from the seat of power — he wanted his turn on the presidential seats, in the literal sense.
Underwhelming government mouth Nick Mangwana sought to dismiss the scandal saying people should not talk about sofas in the midst of a national crisis of this magnitude.
“Should we be talking of sofas when so many of our fellow citizens are missing?
Should we be preoccupied with why there is a picture of people carrying a sofa when whole families have been wiped out by this catastrophe?” he was quoted asking.
It will behove Mangwana’s boss well to heed such advice to stop being petty in the midst of a crisis.
All this against the backdrop of death and destruction pervading Chimanimani and the other parts of Manicaland affected by the cyclone.
How petty can one get to bring the sofa to sit on while he was supposed to be dispensing help and interacting with the victims?
Surely that visit did not require a sedentary position.
Unlike his youthful nemesis, Nelson Chamisa, who was seen with sleeves rolled up holding a shovel to boot clearing the clods of soil blocking the roads, the pfeesident went to Chimanimani for tourism.
With this kind of leadership, Mbuya Nehanda’s bones will not rest in peace. What did she die for at all?
Incompetence writ large
Hon Criss was shocked to read that the army deployed a defective chopper to Chimanimani which failed to do anything on its first day after the weather finally cleared to permit them to make an aerial assessment of the Cyclone Idai-hit Chimanimani and Rusitu Valley.
So our military cannot save lives, they only know how to take them?! Recently, Hon Criss read on a Zambian Facebook page someone asking why is it that medical practitioners pay more money for tuition to learn how to save lives while the military are trained for free to take lives?
Doesn’t this reflect our sad situation where the military is concerned?
Spot the difference
Long time ago reading the then Moto magazine, Hon Criss discovered that in the seminal years of his long-running reign, toppled despot Robert Mugabe earned himself the title of a globetrotter, owing largely to his unending travelling even to the most dud summits.
The globe-trotting habit stuck to him until his ouster in 2017. Not sure whether it is by design or by default that the same bad habit has rubbed off on to Mugabe’s successor and mentee, which has earned him a new sobriquet already — Scarfmore Tongombeya.
Well it does stick, doesn’t it?
When the cyclone disaster struck, he left the country and travelled to the Middle East and back, frittering precious dollars which could have gone a long way to help the victims of Cyclone Idai.
Barely before the cyclone and/or its effects had subsided, he declared two days of public mourning and left the country for a very risible reason to Angola.
At the time of writing, he was expected to leave for South Africa for some useless event or other.
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