Are these men members of the Women’s League?

Obituaries
Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa had a hard time in Parliament on Wednesday, trying and failing to explain the actions of First Lady Grace Mugabe

Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa had a hard time in Parliament on Wednesday, trying and failing to explain the actions of First Lady Grace Mugabe, whose activities have seen men that make up the Zanu PF top hierarchy behaving like women.

THE ORACLE BY TANGAI CHIPANGURA

The VP failed to explain why the president’s wife, who is not a government official, took state resources to distribute to party supporters that attended her rallies. Mnangagwa tried in vain to get away with the embarrassment of Grace’s scandalous acts by seeking to teach legislators the meanings of the words “donation” and “handover”’.

The First Lady has been holding countrywide tours addressing Zanu PF Women’s League rallies where she brandishes presidential power and authority, literally telling everybody she is the most powerful person in the country and that nobody at all can challenge her and get away with it.

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It does not matter that Grace is doing all this in her capacity as secretary for Zanu PF Women’s League — the message she is sending out is that she is now Zimbabwe’s paragon of power and that she can do whatever she wants. She proved this last year by successfully ordering the summary dismissal of Vice-President Joice Mujuru and her sympathisers from the party and government.

So there is no doubt anymore about the supreme power of the First Lady, derived from nothing but by simple virtue of her being the president’s wife. It is the reason why almost the entire Cabinet — most notably Ignatius Chombo, Saviour Kasukuwere, Patrick Zhuwao, Martin Dinha, Jonathan Moyo and even the country’s vice-presidents — must abandon national duty to accompany Grace on her Women’s League rallies.

Dozens of male Zanu PF MPs and a coterie of bootlickers, opportunists and hangers-on have also become a permanent feature at these Women’s League functions. These men, including the likes of Philip Chiyangwa, make it a point they are seen to have attended — queuing up to greet the First Lady as she alights from the presidential helicopter. The men are senior members of the Zanu PF main wing, but they attend and become the main feature at these Women’s League functions as if they were women. Bona fide female members of the League are relegated to mere spectators as these men shamelessly grapple for Grace’s attention.

It must be the role of Women’s League provincial chairpersons to receive their boss on such visits, but this task has been taken away by male provincial chairpersons of the party’s main wing. The Women’s League political commissar Mabel Chinomona has also had her position usurped by Saviour Kasukuwere, the party’s national commissar. That is what “hurricane Grace” has done to Zanu PF’s men; reducing them to members of the Women’s League.

The excuse that this is all being done in recognition of Grace’s position as the president’s wife cannot hold water because of precedence. We had Sally Mugabe who was the First Lady before Grace and was also secretary for the Women’s League. She held similar rallies but confined herself to dealing with affairs of the party’s women without abusing bedroom advantage to pursue personal ambitions.

With Sally, we did not see such humiliating scenes where old men who are also senior cabinet ministers fall over each other — even kneeling before the First Lady — in search of favours.

The “First Lady excuse” is also trashed by the fact that before her entry into politics last year, Grace did address large public gatherings and also accompanied her husband to rallies but degrading spectacles of grown men kneeling before her were never seen.

So, it is not about Grace being the First Lady or secretary for the Women’s League because Sally was both. It is also not true that Grace is going around the country in her capacity as the Women’s League boss, otherwise why would we have the party’s main wing taking over the rallies at the expense of the women?

This is what happens when power begins to shift from one centre to another. Grace has made clear her intention to become Zimbabwe’s president. She asked those that sought to question her ambition: “Why not? Am I not a Zimbabwean?”.

So the jostling has started for favours from the “heir apparent” — in typical Zanu PF fashion; patronage and bootlicking. What we are seeing at Grace’s rallies, including the scandalous donation of government tractors in her personal capacity, is the epitome of abuse of power. It is being allowed to happen by authorities who have chosen to seek political survival ahead of the mandate to serve the people.

This is the hopeless extent to which our politicians have sunk. Hard work and merit no longer count. Praise-singing and patronage is all that matters.

Because of the intoxicating power that supposedly mature men in Zanu PF are bestowing on the First Lady, Grace has overnight transformed from that ladylike, meek and loving mother of the nation into a vicious, ruthless and power-hungry politician.

She exhibited these traits last year when she prided herself in the name “monya for hire” as she ripped Mujuru apart in bloody scenes that saw many liberators of this country thrown into political Siberia on mere suspicion and without a chance to defend themselves.

But, as I have said before, this attempt at making political leaders little gods is an adventure that should make us very afraid. We stand in danger of transforming good leaders into incorrigible tyrants — blind to danger, deaf to advice and impervious to common wisdom. We are creating “brothers to the moon and cousins to the sun” out of mere mortals!

The tragedy of such tomfoolery is that weak-minded leaders are so infected by this praise-singing and sycophantic flattery that they begin to believe they are indefatigable holy cows!

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