Charge Him For Refusing To Think

Desperate times, they say, call for desperate measures.
Bob Mugabe has been conned and scorned. Big time.
A woman by the local name of Nomatter Takira, a fetish priestess( an ancestral medium) of a sort needed money, a lot of it, in cash-strapped Zimbabwe. Like everybody, she knew where the money was in the land- under the mattresses and in the pockets of the ZANU-PF apparatchiks.
So. She devised a plan of action to get what she wanted.
And got it she did- a solid million dollars, Obama dollars I mean!
So what was her plot?
She got for herself a can of diesel(fuel), a hosepipe, a hungry and desperate young man and set off for one of the huge boulders that adorn the environs of the provincial town, Chinhoyi.
Once there, she dispatched the young man with the can to a hideout somewhere on the boulder away from the prying eyes of people .
The nozzle of the hosepipe was dragged to the top of the boulder. The other end was inserted in the can of diesel. Pretty soon precious diesel was gushing on top of 'magic' boulder when the pipe was opened. That done, she retreats to town to announce her magical conjugations to lieutenants of the strongman. This 'Good News' shortly after reaches Mugabe's ear, himself a son of the province, and he quickly sends senior members of his cabal for first hand evidence of the magical prowess of this new 'Ambuya Nehanda'.
With the young man in place 'the experiment' is repeated and Bob's envoys are awed into stupor as they see refined diesel gushing from the top of the said boulder. They return to Bob with the news that Zimbabwe's diesel woes are eternally over.
Days later, state house orders that Madam Takira be treated like a queen. And an amount of $1m is offloaded to treat her good on the finer things of life for her kindly helping Zimbabwe in her hour of need.
However the fact that diesel can only be obtained through a refinery process only began to dawn on some of the inner cycle of the Mugabe regime days later and another team was secretly sent to make a thorough check of the 'discovery'.
This week Mbuya Takira was charged for defrauding the state.
The question on many people's mind however is how could a whole state, including the presidency, be doped by something so obviously questionable.
My conclusion is that Mugabe and his cabal are clinically and criminally stupid.
Methinks Mugabe and his cabal should be charged in place of Nomatter Takira for gross stupidity.

The Circus Continues

This past weekend, there was an extraordinary meeting of the heads of the states that constitute the Southern African Development Community( SADC ) in Sandton, Johannesburg.
There were only two issues on the table:
(i) the political paralysis in Zimbabwe,
(ii) the deteriorating conditions in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Alas , after 12 hours of evangelistic diplomacy and undoubtedly a good measure of arm-twisting, nothing concrete came out.
Mugabe has once again, as expected, stubbornly clung unto the cabinet posts he had single-handedly allocated to his cronies in his Zanu-PF notwithstanding the agreement he had entered into with the two other parties for a government of national unity.

The MDC had sensibly argued that Mugabe should not be allowed to take all the posts that deal with state security. They had punted for the Home Affairs portfolio which is responsible for the Police Service after Mugabe had reiterated that he was not prepared to entertain any negotiations on the defence and National Intelligence portfolios. Incidentally these were the same state organs that were used by Mugabe to brutalise and silence the opposition before the elections in June.
The SADC leaders however decided to reward Mugabe by resolving that the Zanu-PF and the MDC should co-manage that Ministry. Duh , can you imagine that?
The MDC, as expected, refused to accept that resolution and so the Zimbabwe crisis remains as deadlock as it gets.
Just yesterday, Mugabe was threatening to form a government without the other parties.
Such a scenario will, of course, exacerbate the already dire economic situation in Zimbabwe. The billion dollars promised as aid for Zimbabwe will not be released until the donors are confident that the money will not end up in the hands of Mugabe and his cronies.

As far as the situation in the DRC is concerned, the SADC leaders were as unconvincing as they have always been. Meanwhile, thousands have been displaced. Hungry, thirsty and traumatised, innocent civilians are marching across their own God-given land in anguish and despair without hope for themselves and their children.
What a shame!