The president is a weevil

It’s official. The president is a weevil.

At the wake of the late Nathan Shamuyarira in June, President Mugabe called information minister Jonathan Moyo the ‘devil incarnate’ – an adjective reserved, in these parts, for anyone who might present a threat to his 34-year rule. At that same occasion, Mugabe spoke of weevils bent on destroying Zanu (PF) from within.

Weevils never launch an attack from outside the granary – but eat their way out from the very core of the seed. The metaphor seemed apt. At the National Heroes Acre – that place one is interred after a lifetime of thievery – Mugabe reiterated his weevil speech, as the body of Shamuyarira awaited burial. There may even have been ululations as most onlookers, aware of Moyo’s divisive history, thought, ‘Eheka, shamhu yazorira! The president is cracking the whip!’ The pun is not deliberate.

It is said that, after a tête-à-tête with his propaganda maestro, Mugabe instructed Moyo to stay out of trouble for the remainder of his five-year term. Moyo has generally remained invisible, since the ‘devil incarnate’ speech. That he is still intact, after the President’s attack, is a cause for wonder.

Even before the weevil word had come to mean a Zanu (PF) internal saboteur, the party’s secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa, had clashed with Moyo, accusing him of using state media – which is run by the information ministry – to further his personal interests in the succession battle. It was as if the President had experienced a Eureka moment – ‘aha, now I see!’ – when he lamented that Moyo had removed editors loyal to the party and replaced them with those that might be more pliable to the minister’s schemes.