TAKEN FOR A RIDE

Who smiled as she rode on a tiger

At the end of the ride

The lady was inside

And the smile was on the face of the tiger

ZAPU rode the ZANU tiger – and where is ZAPU now?  Ndabaningi Sithole thought he could ride the Mugabe tiger – and what happened to him?

Let’s admit it, we have all been taken for a ride. How did we let it happen?

We need to understand what kind of a beast the tiger is. He is a cousin to the lion, a carnivorous big cat.  But the lion shows his force. He roars and throws his weight around. Nobody would think of riding a lion.  They know it is too dangerous. The tiger, on the other hand, is subtle. He looks and acts more like a big version of our domestic cats. He looks prettier than a lion. He goes around quietly, like a domestic cat. He looks gentle, but if you turn your back on him – Hokoyo!

His favourite way of catching his prey is to creep up on it silently from behind, then, just when the victim least suspects, jumps on him and bites once, hard, at the back of his neck. That breaks the victim’s neck.  Then the tiger has a carcass he can eat at his leisure.

And don’t fool yourself. The tiger may look gentle, but he is strong. That bite on your neck is strong. If the victim is a buffalo, the tiger is still strong enough to drag the carcass away and eat it somewhere quiet.

We all thought in 1980 that we could ride this nice gentle beast, even though some of us knew, even then, that it was really a strong and cunning predator. Some people could remind us of its earlier victims, but we chose to ignore them.

Now the tiger feels that he can show us his teeth without fear. The chief tiger even behaves more like a lion. He doesn’t try to fool us any more. He roars like a lion, because he believes he has us in a corner and he doesn’t need to be subtle any more.

Maybe, this time, he is wrong. But this tiger-turned-lion is old. He will have to give up soon and turn his power over to a younger beast. It looks as if that beast is a tiger too, and a more cunning hunter than the old one. He watched the old tiger, learned all his tricks and developed what he learned.

Monday morning’s news, that in some areas thugs are still sounding up people on their death lists, but in Mbare the army are clamping down on the thugs. This looks as if we will have martial law, maybe before this is printed. That means banning political parties, including Zanu (PF), in so far as it still exists, but the Joint Operations Command probably consider it a liability now, if they want international respectability.

The JOC is the new tiger on the block. The brains behind the JOC is gentler than the old tiger. He is more polite and quiet. But, make no mistake about it, he is still strong, quick and hungry.