After reading Jonathan Moyos (Pictured) contribution which appeared in the financial gazette and was reproduced by the new Zimbabwe website in which he argued that the MDCs choice of Roy Bennet as Minister of Agriculture was treacherous, I came to the conclusion that the Professor has lost track of his once good brain. I also realised that when desperation pushes a man to sing the loudest for their supper they surely never realise how everyone is looking and wondering if they are still within the confines of sanity. Moyos article clearly shows how he is slowly becoming less useful to both the academic world and Zimbabweans. Having realised that the Pontius pilate political card, which he has been trying to play all along after leaving ZANU PF is not working for him, Moyo has just returned to ZANU PF and picked up the game from where he left without taking time to notice the changes around him. Using the Pontius pilate political card Moyo tried with little success to rid himself of all the evils that he did whilst in ZANU PF and the frustrations of failing to convince Zimbabweans have made him return to his gang.
After going through his whole article, I asked myself if Jonathan is singing to the right audience or not. If he is, why are his listeners not getting the message and responding accordingly. Can they please give Moyo a position and a big budget for jingles so that at least he can have some pocket money, instead of allowing him to expose himself through his mediocre criticisms of whatever the MDC is doing. His criticisms are not respectful of changes in the political landscape ever since he unceremoniously left ZANU PF in 2004. He has failed to realise that Zimbabwean politics is now in the post-Third Chimurenga period.
I hope someone in ZANU PF will stop Moyo from continuously exposing himself by whispering to him that this is not a time for moribund nationalism and scatterbrains but that it is a time for sober thinking, planning, reconstruction and remedying of what senseless and moribund and war-vet-monopoly nationalism destroyed. His latest contribution to Zimbabwean politics has not been helpful in this regard.
Moyos article contained malicious statements which if not responded to, have the capacity to cause more harm than good to Zimbabwe. I am in this article going to select some of these statements and show how Jonathan Moyo has remained ensnared in old history and not the present politics of our country. In his article Moyo wrote that:
Is the MDC-T really serious that it can carelessly risk worsening the plight of the suffering majority of people in the country by treatingits proposed but unwarranted and provocative post of Deputy Minister of Agriculture for a former Rhodesian army man called Roy Bennett as more important than the pursuit of inter-party policies by the coalition government to improve the livelihood and welfare of Zimbabweans?
In an attempt to appease ZANU PF, Jonathan is once again peddling the worn-out racist card. It would be silly if not out rightly insane for anyone to think that Roy Bennet is not a Zimbabwean but a Rhodesian. How sick can one be to talk of Rhodesians 28 years after independence? How can someone who aspires to be a political leader think he can mobilise people around racism. Moyo must know that racism is as bad as tribalism.
For the avoidance of doubt, Bennetts permanent unsuitability to be a member of Zimbabwes government in any capacity has nothing to do with his present legal circumstances in which he has been lawfully indicted by a court of law to stand trial in the High Court of Zimbabwe after he was lawfully charged with very serious offences for which he has been on bail since last February.
Moyo must be thanked for answering a question many Zimbabweans have been asking by revealing that Roy Bennett is being persecuted for being white and nothing more. Surely, how can they sink so low? Politics must be practiced around progressive ideas and policies not hatred of individuals. Zimbabwe is not a country of infants who can easily be mobilised on racist ideas that are condemned all over the world. The onus on our leaders is to rebuild Zimbabwe that is non-racial, non-tribal, non-sexist and founded on civic conceptions of nationhood than nativism and primordialism. Moyo is far off the mark on this one.
If Prime Minister Tsvangirai pushes for Bennett to be in our Ministry of Agriculture and succeeds, then just like the sun will rise tomorrow, it would be a major issue in the next election because King Mzilikazi, Lobengula along with Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi and our fallen heroes of the Second Chimurenga would turn in their graves and inspire the surviving comrades of the revolution and their off-springs to set this whole country on fire. That is not a threat but a generational promise.
Reading this statement no one is in doubt that Moyo is a prophet of violence. Again Moyo nails himself as a supporter if not the evil-person strategising and planning violence, come every election. Why Moyo do you worship at the altar of violence without shame, while others are trying to heal the nation and reconcile society? By being brazenly racist Jonathan Moyo thinks he can mobilise war veterans to the side of ZANU-PF’s violent tradition once more by casting Roy Bennett as a Rhodesian Soldier, Selous Scout and Rhodie who killed people in Mozambique and Zambia. You even insult President Ian Khama for being born by a white woman. Is racism not a refuge of scoundrels just like tribalism is the language of the sick-minded? True veterans of the liberation war have risen above this simplistic nonsense inspired by latter-day racists.
This statement should be accepted as Moyos rare admittance that he is the author of violence in Zimbabwe. By clearly threatening that the next elections will be violent Moyo is selfishly pushing his personal agenda and not being sympathetic to the people of Zimbabwe who have been killed and brutalised in a post colonial Zimbabwe by people who think like him. ZANU PF and Jonathan Moyo must learn that election-time is not war-time. Nowhere in the world have the hearts of a people been won through violence.
Since then, the MDC-T quest has been only about posts in the Prime Ministers office with special reference to the filling of illegal positions in the partys parallel government structures whose civil servants earn top up salaries ranging from US$700 to US$7,000.Parenthetically, there is new and incontrovertible evidence that some but not yet all MDC-T Cabinet Ministers are earning top up salaries pegged on the Kenyan cabinet salaries reported to be around US$15,000 a month. Otherwise, and as a matter of fact, all MDC-T Cabinet Ministers and civil servants are receiving top up salaries and their evil pecuniary interest explains why MDC-T Cabinet Ministers who do not agree with the disengagement decision have nevertheless succumbed to it.
It seems Jonathan Moyo is terribly broke and this is indicated by his laughable and repetitive reference to other people’s salaries. He seems to be personally hate by the idea of some people earning between $700-$7000–a lie which he created and is beginning to believe as a truth, because of his financial doldrums. Its very simple Professor, you chose to villagise yourself and left academia where others earn more that $7000 per month for their legitimate standing and contribution to knowledge. If we may ask you, what happened to your position with Ford Foundation? What did you do with your short-stint at the University of Witwatersrand? What did you do with your short-five years concubinage with ZANU-PF as its sin-doctor? Do not cry for other people’s blood when you messed yourself up. You must learn to blame your self for making foolish decisions, inspired by no principles but selfishness.
There is no amount of the abuse of press freedom that can justify the rewriting of Zimbabwes history. Bennetts hands have the blood of Zimbabwes liberation fighters including that of Zimbabwean children who were in various refugee camps in Mozambique during the liberation struggle.
Its indeed a pity that Moyo you continue to take the people of Zimbabwe for granted. Do you think by reading history of Zimbabwe as a tale of white tormentors of blacks, you will hide your recent role in trying to extinguish the embers of democratisation, derail the democratic train and even authorise violence since 2000? No, history is yet to judge you.
Post published in: Opinions