I was quite surprised to hear that Blessed Geza had another video last Wednesday, an indicator that my interest in him and that of many is waning.
Geza makes a lot of sense, but I cannot shake the feeling that his cause is increasingly looking like a lost one and before long he may be irrelevant.
I may be wrong in my predictions, I am not a betting man and I am terribly poor at forecasting, but I have a feeling Geza’s time has come and gone.
For starters, he speaks for many of us when he decries corruption and grand looting that have become brazen, yet the citizens of this country continue to suffer.
I know the powers that be do not care, but as long as Wicknell Chivayo continues doling out cars, questions are going to be asked about the source of his wealth.
So far, the responses have been far from convincing.
This is a sore point for many, who continue to see the country hurtling into an economic abyss, where hospitals have no medicines and teachers are barely paid a living wage.
A running joke in the past few days was that if Chivayo is the successful business person that he claims to be, then how come he was not exhibiting at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair.
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Ironically, Chivayo went on to praise the company that hosted the trade fair and, as per his notoriety, he gave two cars to the head honchos at the fair, yet he did not feel the need to exhibit.
Unless of course he has nothing to exhibit and his business is questionable as alleged.
With all this baggage, Chivayo was ever present at President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s side during the fair, raising further questions about their relationship.
This opens the door for critics to attack Mnangagwa, as they would expect the president to be far from anyone who is accused of corruption on such a scale.
Chivayo is innocent until he has been brought before the courts and convicted, but there are legitimate questions being asked about his business operations and sadly there are no answers.
Two of his erstwhile business pals are languishing in remand prison and we ask ourselves how he has managed to escape a similar fate.
Chivayo will become, if he is not already, Mnangagwa’s Achilles heel, a vulnerability that the president’s critics, such as Geza will target.
Back to Geza, while he raises valid points, I get the feeling that unless something drastic happens, we are beginning to see the sunset of his resistance.
For starters, he is a lone voice, no one prominent or within the ranks of Zanu PF has joined him in his crusade.
The lone ranger approach makes him look like someone, who is bitter and fighting a personal battle rather than the national cause that he purports to crusade for.
It is high time we start asking where his backers are and why they are quiet when the ship is clearly sinking.
Maybe I am being too hasty in judging Geza, but I am sure I am not the only one who is questioning why we are only seeing one person and nobody else.
Yes, he may be the face of his crusade, but surely he cannot do it alone.
I am reminded of Simba Makoni’s exit from Zanu PF, when he claimed there were many that were backing his Mavambo outfit.
But in the end, it was only Dumiso Dabengwa, among Zanu PF stalwarts, who publicly backed him, the rest remained where they were or at worst, played both sides like the cowards they were.
Makoni did not do as well as he had expected at the 2008 presidential elections, but if he had more public backers, I am sure that he would have done much better.
When Geza called for the first protests on March 31, he told us there would be “action”.
To this day, we have no idea what that action was and what the objective was. Geza over promised and frankly did not deliver.
I am sure in his heart of hearts, he knows that March 31 did not go as he had hoped, but instead of accepting that, he was back on YouTube telling us that it had been an unparalleled success.
He was clearly in denial.
Because he was not honest with himself, Geza called for more “stay-aways”, which to be honest were monumental flops.
Again, he was in denial, claiming these were also successful. Ludicrously, he claimed people had stayed away in their minds and hearts.
If Geza and his backers had been a little more honest with themselves after March 31, they would have gone back to the proverbial drawing board and asked what did not work and why.
Instead, they chose to continue flogging a dead horse and that has harmed their credibility.
I am not sure what his next step is, but for now, he probably needs to take some time off to reflect on his previous steps.
Geza is popular because what he says resonates with a lot of people, people that had hoped that this administration was genuine when it set out to fight corruption, but have increasingly become delusional, as their tax dollars seem to be funding corrupt lifestyles.
In a country where speaking out could lead to imprisonment or prolonged prosecution, Geza became the voice of the voiceless and for a while, a hero.
However, after a few months beating this path, Geza needs to rethink his processes lest he joins a growing number of people who bravely faced off with Zanu PF, but fizzled without as much of a meaningful impact.
