Moyo Least Qualified to Talk About Virtue

Columnists
PROFESSOR Jonathan Moyo’s obituary of the late Vice-President Joseph Msika “Msika, a man of the truth ” (Zimbabwe Independent August 7) was a curious mix of hypocrisy laced with dishonesty. Of all the people that could have written obituaries on Msika, Jonathan Moyo was the least qualified.

PROFESSOR Jonathan Moyo’s obituary of the late Vice-President Joseph Msika “Msika, a man of the truth ” (Zimbabwe Independent August 7) was a curious mix of hypocrisy laced with dishonesty. Of all the people that could have written obituaries on Msika, Jonathan Moyo was the least qualified.

The title of the obituary itself “Msika, a man of the truth” tells us a lot about everything that Jonathan Moyo is not. In fact, Moyo is the antithesis of truth and honesty that it is almost impossible to believe if anything he said about Msika is actually true.

 

Moyo says Msika “never exaggerated his capacity” yet it is Moyo himself who thinks he knows everything and that he is larger than life itself. We are told that Msika loathed the so-called mafikizolos —— the textbook politicians who claim to know more than they actually do.

The term mafikizolo became part of our political lingo when it was used in reference to Jonathan Moyo during his time as the government’s overzealous Information minister, Zanu PF propagandist and chief apologist. It is possible that Msika might have been thinking of Moyo when he, in Moyo’s own words, became “vicious” against certain leaders who thought they had a licence to “willy nilly say or do anything” just because they had “high sounding formal educational standards”.

Moyo wants the readers of his obituary to believe that Msika was a principled nationalist who never allowed personal ambition to come in the way of his service to the nation explaining that this is why he never sought “high positions for their own sake even when opportunities came begging”.

Yet Moyo himself is a cunning opportunist and shameless political vacillator who uses the sad passing away of an 86-year-old man to write a mouthful obituary merely as a political springboard to draw attention to himself in the hope ——  I presume —— that someone from Zanu PF will notice him and re-admit him after he was unceremoniously ejected from the party for allegedly trying to usurp power from the Zanu PF hierarchy which included Msika. While Msika is described as “humble” Moyo uses his obituary to describe people with different views from him as “foolish” ——  showing that his ego has no limits.

After his well publicised mugodoyi comments where Msika described opposition supporters as dogs, it is difficult to accept that Msika was as virtuous as Jonathan Moyo would have us believe. Even then, to hear a Moyo speak of virtue is like inviting Osama bin Laden to be a key speaker at a conference on peace and democracy.  Hudson Yemen Taivo, United Kingdom.