Go hang a thousand times, said George Charamba.
Go hang, said Mutambara.
I started thinking about the hypocrisy of it all and I thought, handingajaidzi makudo neanokamhina (Why allow anyone to get away with murder, literally. – Editor).
In a stunning feat of Orwellian doublespeak, Arthur both boasted about his Oxford credentials and said the West could go hang.
Here is the hypocrisy: Arthur’s entire professional life in the US, with the exception of a few months at McKinsey, was a series of post-doctoral research fellowships at different universities and at the NASA John Glenn Centre. Incidentally, we have all seen puffed up CVs, and Mutambara’s is a classic example – how is it possible that a post-doctoral researcher in his 20s is given the sole responsibility, with no supervision, to manage a project that is worth more than half a million dollars, as he claims in one of the highlights of his CV?
It is clear that he never held a tenure track position.
The main issue here is that he was the beneficiary of one post-doctoral fellowship from one Western university after the other. This, in addition to his Rhodes scholarship at Oxford, builds a pattern of a man who has taken rather a lot from the reviled West.
When the MDC split, David Coltart sat on the fence, before deciding to throw his lot in with Welshman Ncube’s formation. After they head-hunted Arthur and parachuted him in to be their president, sidelining Sibanda, Chimanikire and others and thus ignoring the very democratic principles which they claimed had been flouted by Tsvangirai, Coltart, Ncube, Misihairabwi and Mutambara went on a tour of Washington, and of European capitals, to introduce their new leader.
I do not recall them going to the Far East, but maybe I was not paying attention.
It is hypocritical for Mugabe and his ministers to slam the West and still send their children to universities there.
Mutambara’s interview also revealed the close affinity that he has to Zanu (PF). Like Zanu (PF), Mutambara has a misplaced sense of entitlement. Zanu (PF)’s is based on the claim that they “liberated” us, while Mutambara’s appears to rest solely on his superior academic qualifications. “I am coming out of Oxford,” Mutambara says. “Tsvangirai is an intellectual midget”, he said on a previous occasion.
And this is the man who has ambitions to be our President.
Good grades do not amount to intelligence, and intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom. And intelligence certainly does not amount to character. For the love of all that is beautiful and good about our country – keep the man away from real power.
Post published in: Opinions