Source: We have learnt nothing from our immediate past | Daily News
IT was recently reported that the First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa has travelled to New York to attend the United Nations 63rd Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
One cannot help feeling that our immediate history is repeating itself.
After Grace Mugabe’s graceless fall from grace, it did not take long for the State media to prefix the pfeesident’s wife name with the title Amai.
Besides her children, whose mother is she anyway? Is it that automatic to call every head of State’s wife Amai?
This is the kind of sycophancy that we must never be seeing in the media, much still in the oft talked about new dispensation.
Last time she inserted her good self into the negotiations with the medical practitioners, there was public outcry over the blurring of government functions and what has been termed sexual transference of constitutional authority.
Now this time around to sanitise everything, the State-owned media reported that she was attending the conference through her Angel of Hope Foundation.
We were told that she has contributed immensely to the economic and social development of women in marginalised communities. Really, is that so?
Besides the State media hacks, this is new at least if you ask any random pedestrian roaming the streets.
To be honest, not many people can say they know about her Angel of Hope Foundation which apparently came to life when her husband became the pfeesident, how so convenient!
We will be keen to know if she or the organisation she represents paid her hotel bills and air fare.
While the first lady position is not an official position, it is not a must that the wife of a head of State must be philanthropic.
It is also allowed to be yourself, be a stay-at-home wife to pfeesident and stop pretending to be doing philanthropic work.
Shall we tell the pfeesident?
The pfeesident is a poor joker and there is nothing he can do to change it, it is not in him. His attempt at humour, when he compared himself with God during the Zimbabwe-South Africa Bi-National Commission, fell flat.
Besides the polite guffaws from his captive interlocutors, it attracted brickbats from the discerning public who can see through him.
Hon Criss could not even get the hang of his dull analogy. While it was decidedly not funny, it was indeed blasphemous.
He said he will not be distracted by negative forces because, even the Lord in heaven, could not keep His house in order but He remains there as a creator.
Now, it is either he is at sea on the subject or he is trying to twist the scriptures for his own ends or both, not least because God never failed to put his house in order because of Satan.
Not that it is Hon Criss’ place to judge anyone, but there are certain words which yours truly do not expect to come out of the pfeesident’s mouth, words like God or at least not in reference to himself, in supplication or even when dissembling piety.
Outspoken MDC spokesperson, Jacob Mafume, was quoted elsewhere saying “How can he dare compare himself to the creator when he is subjecting everyone in Zimbabwe to a living hell? Surely, God does not deliver suffering to His own people.”
Compassion
fatigued
Last week Zanu PF’s diplomatic correspondent, sorry, ZBC’s diplomatic correspondent Judith Makwanya passed away after a short illness we were told.
The ministry of information released a statement saying: “Government learns with sadness of the untimely passing on of diplomatic correspondent Ms Judith Makwanya. Judith served her country with distinction and was one of the journalists placed on the sanctions list which became a roll of honour for patriots. May her soul rest in peace .”
While the government was heaping praise on the departed veteran journalist, the jury was still out in the court of social media, at least as far as serving her country with distinction bit is concerned.
Opinions were riven. In death, she became a butt of many uncharitable jokes while the other section of the social media was forgiving.
For all her journalistic work, Hon Criss remembers her for soiling the image of the former South African president Thabo Mbeki in one fell swoop, when she asked him upon arrival at the then Harare international airport in 2008, if there was any crisis in Zimbabwe.
To which he responded there is no crisis notwithstanding the fact that Zimbabwe was in the throes of electoral crisis for which he was coming to mediate between Zany PF and the MDC.
For this and other reasons, Mbeki earned himself a term denialist, one can even call him the truth denialist.
Sauce for the goose
South Africa’s president was in our shores to shore up support for his Zimbabwean counterpart during the so-called South Africa Bi-National Commission.
He promised a lot but, in the end, delivered too little just like his Harare counterpart.
Cyril Ramaphosa was in Zimbabwe at a time when he is facing an election in his own country.
Of course, we are watching with a keen interest how the electoral foreplay is panning out in that country.
We have seen him going to the train stations, boarding the trains with great unwashed public so to speak, “in order to appreciate the life that most poor South Africans are living in.”
Something which prompted one of the brilliant South African writers to say that if leaders were to go and sleep under the bridges in order to appreciate the life they are living, then there is huge a problem.
Hon Criss hopes the South African electorate will punish him for his two-faced nature.
He comes to Zimbabwe to support dictatorship, whilst promising good governance to South Africans.
My uncle, Criss senior, God bless him, made me laugh recently when he said if you see yourself marrying someone with a few loose screws without you noticing it, it means your own screws are not tight enough.
In the same way Ramaphosa cannot be friends with budding dictators whilst he is not.
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