(NEWZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai: When a man dares Hell's Fury

Tsvangirai: When a man dares Hell's Fury
03/12/2011 00:00:00
by Nathaniel Manheru

AS I have said, I am not interested in the Prime Minister's love life, good copy though it maybe. That side of things is his business, or more accurately, his problem. Let him solve it, or stew in it if he can't. He who dares swallow a pestle knows the circumference of his throat. No sob-tales please.

My interest clinically relates to those who serve him, or more accurately put, who think they do. My interest is with those who support him, or more accurately, those who think they do. Yes, my interest is how he handles sticky situations, however generated by whomsoever.

For in all three we have the sum total of Tsvangirai: the man, the father, the husband, the politician, the presidential aspirant, the gay supporter, above all, Locardia's man.

That side of the Prime Minister cannot be private, can never be a no-go zone for institutions of inquisition, principal among them, the press in its various forms and permutations.

The reason for this is not hard to find: all thinking Zimbabweans deserve to know and test the intellect and machinery built by those who seek to govern and lead us.

The wonderful CIO

As I said last week, if you cannot unknot the little complications of your miserably simple life, you cannot begin to aspire to want to run the sum of our broad and very complicated lives by way of the Nation of Zimbabwe in its totality.

This is how Tsvangirai's sexuality debacle quickly "transfigurates" into political suitability issues, to use vhoko rekuHigh School. After all throughout human history, sexuality has always been the soft and tender tissue of otherwise raging, runaway power. And this silly notion of invoking the phantom or bogey of Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity to explain away one's elementary incompetencies, one's miserable life buffeted by sheer recklessness, all that simply will not wash.

If sheer suspicion of CIO infiltration motivates him to renounce and abjure so foundational a relationship, why has he not renounced his politics, his MDC and his peers, all of which he claims are heavily infiltrated by the selfsame CIO? And anyway, why is the reviled CIO so good at keeping him, at securing him? Could he thus be infiltrated? Is he well on the route to self-renouncing?

Nyamutama nen'ombe

At one point the CIO withdrew their services at his request. Then he harboured a romantic view of his own security trained by very shady characters on not-so-secret farms in South Africa. It was partly such an overestimation of his private security which caused the terrible tragedy to hit his family about two years ago.

Only then did he come back to the same hated CIO to demand their services. One gets weary of this Janus-faced political poise by a CIO-dependent leader seeking to cultivate a false image of animosity with the very Government department which not only keeps him safe from danger, but over which he is dying to assume control.

Such crass, duplicitous reasoning must be challenged and exposed. Far from redeeming him, such false complains actually raise fresher, deeper worries about his capacities, whether congenital or hired. The essence of politics is being able to deal with any eventuality and it's no political heroism projecting the picture of a quitter over small issues such as Locardia, while you promise competence in handling bigger challenges, such as running our combined lives as Zimbabweans. The Shona people proverbially maintain that it is always a comical spectacle when a self-praising chewer of tough, dry cow-hide suddenly chokes from a piece of veal. Nyamutambanen'ombe wabayiwa!

By-stander?

First, an assessment of the Prime Minister's capacities. The Prime Minister-lover says he had become "an innocent by-stander" or "spectator" in the whole saga. By-stander? Is that a posture capable of impregnating a woman? Or he means "by standing", in which case we will all "blush", feeling our raw and indecorous Prime Minister is taking transparency too far, indeed is making all of us very uncomfortable, innocent and reluctant "spectators" to deeds or misdeeds of the night?

And anyway, why is he making an issue out of a stance and posture the same media he blames was accosting him to abandon? The media wanted the man to take charge by giving whatever had gone on at the Karimatsenga Tembo homestead a name.
The real problem is that Tsvangirai chose silence, chose mock-passivity, hoping knotty matters would solve themselves. To this day, he still abnegates, including through the very statement which purports to break this baffling silence and simulated passivity.

Lifting veil of secrecy

By his own admission his relationship with Locardia had subsisted for a very long time.

Given that it is only now that it has hit heated headlines, he must be the first to admit that the press has been very restrained on that matter, only coming in after the Prime Minister volitionally took that crucial step of lifting the veil of secrecy to his affection-related activities by taking the first public steps by way of marriage.

And the institution and rituals of marriage are communal definitionally. Surely, that cannot be a discovery from a man born in 1952, a man who has been in wedlock over three decades? Once you trigger processes of marriage in whatever form and to whatever ends, the community eye kicks in, as too, does its restless, babbling tongue. And the press is the modern, detribalised community's institutionalised tongue.

We all have gone through the same, all of us who have married but a mere nonentities. It can only be worse for those who occupy public offices. That he mishandled this patently public process, to infinitely huge media interest, thereby forfeiting its usual nourishing value, surely does not grant him any license to blame the media, bureaucrats and everyone else but himself. After all, he himself admits to mishandling the whole matter, while discharging himself from blameworthiness. After all you cannot mishandle matters by standing, if that is what he meant by the compound word "by-standing".

Apolitical love

Thirdly, Tsvangirai sounds like he is complaining about "an underhand and active political hand" which he says is now driving his whole marital matter. Yet by his own admission and the admission of his own party, the whole courtship was political from day one. He himself talks about "many stakeholders . . . some of whom have their own ulterior intentions and agendas", a sob-tale that seems to suggest a man tragically unable to read motives driving those around him. But it is also a phrase which one faction in the MDC-T has redeployed to mean Tsvangirai is complaining about the "intrusive" Makones, themselves a couple volitionally chose as family friends. If that is what he meant, it throws light on how he manages and abuses friendships.

But clearly this one hell of an imprecise statement which indicts anyone, everyone in the MDC-T who has had something to do with this whole needless saga. The Makones are being accused of self-seeking. But so, too, are all those within the MDC-T who have taken a position on the matter.

So the whole matter has always had a political fragrance: sumptuous in the beginning, effluvial in the end. Only a naïve politician would harbour expectations of apolitical love. Indeed only a philanderer would break a relationship over that.

Sordid saga. No problem and granted for as long as that is understood as a statement of remorse and moral recovery and reawakening by a born-again Casanova promising the priest never to backslide. But never as a censorious view of the workings of the press over this one story. Let the Prime Minister look at his love life before, during and after Locardia, and tell us what colour he sees over his affairs. And a man of such wassails cannot surely claim anguish and reputational injury.

All the chief's horses

Let me now turn to the Prime Minister's lame men. In fact you cannot help but pity the MDC man. He has no staff, simple and straight. And this not because of anything sinister, but all because of this shabby habit in his office of confusing party activists with civil servants, this shabby habit of tolerating meddlesome upstart Ministers as they pretend to play know-it-all civil servants, all from empty tanks reeking with fumes of beer.

These drunk minions have absolutely no clue in handling public communication, and in managing deficiencies and indiscretions of their error-prone master. In consequence, the Prime Minister's office comes across as utterly degraded and bemusing. Whether by inspiration or by sheer oversight, steamy affairs are consummated in offices, haa-aa!
An error so rich

Let us look at how they handled the Prime Minister's response to this nagging matter. The first intervention comes by way of a statement apparently showing a Tsvangirai confirming that indeed he married Locardia. It gets released to the press. A little while later, that statement is withdrawn.

A second one is released, this time suggesting Tsvangirai did not marry, but only paid damages to the family of a woman she mistook to be pregnant. Two key elements in the whole saga are removed, seemingly as a clever afterthought processed through a bungling official.

Correctly the Daily News asks Tamborinyoka why two conflicting statements are suitable for laying the vexatious matter to rest.

His responds is remarkably honest (not naïve!), and deserves to be reissued verbatim.

He says: "The first one (statement) was sent in error without editing and final approval. The second statement is the official version."

What? An error over such a fraught matter two frenzied weeks old? You watch, you wait, for two good weeks to make a mistake? Surely this is one matter which is handled collectively, gingerly, to ensure the response is both definitive and unassailable? The media had done a frenetic job in drawing abundant attention to all pressure points that needed attention. I mean how do you have an intervention so much awaited for so long simply so wrong?

Editing truth

And what is "editing" in this context? What is "final approval"? Much worse, what is an "official version" in this context? Which one is the unofficial one? The first one? And of the two, which one is more hospitable to truth, nothing but the whole truth: the one sent in error, without editing and without final approval, or the official version? Who approves a statement by the Prime Minister? Or are we being told this is a rationalised response by officials issued out in the name of the Prime Minister? To suggest continued bureaucratisation of matters of the heart, of family? And when its "official", are we forgiven for thinking this is detached from the horse's mouth, that this is inauthentic? Clearly the difference between the two versions is not merely stylistic.

It stems from two core issues: to marry or not to marry, whether before or after "damage". To impregnate or to simulate pregnancy, whether for marriage or damages. Real issues which make the notion of editing and final approval at once surfacial and very fraught than is intended by Look, sorry, Luke.

No Freudian slip

We are dealing with contested truths, dealing with how truth is edited out or expurgated for politically correct "official" versions. This dramatically widens the credibility gap, does it not? It deepens the conflict between the jockeying factions, does it not?

Who sanctioned the first release which seemed to vindicate the Makones, while damning and dumping Luke? Who sanctioned the second version which retreated from and abandoned the Makones, while vindicating Luke, indeed while dumping Locardia as not big, big with Tsvangirai's twins? Who made the error of releasing the first statement? Was the first one a Freudian slip? In other words was the error the truth?

Honey from a fly

But all this is to wonder away from the core issue, which is: in circumstances of controversy in which a key person's viewpoint is eagerly awaited, is an "official", written statement or statements the best way of delivering that viewpoint?

A statement handled by the very officers who brought about the distance of skepticism between the Prime Minister and the public in the first place, officers who proceed to blunder in a way that spawns worse ambiguities, worse skepticism? Do you deliver honey through a green fly? Use a fly's honeycomb to process honey. Some of us go so far as to ask, has the Prime Minister really spoken?

And if we assume he did, through which statement did hespeak to us? Has he cleared the air such that he can walk through a newsroom without being pelted by the same questions over the same matter? Surely a matter settled should no longer arise? Is that the situation Luke? Much worse, have you been helpful through all those blips and blunders which speak volumes, which raise more questions? Was this sheer ineptitude or a form of protest against the boss? Could it be that in trying to correct a blunder, "there are many stakeholders in the process, some of whom have their ulterior intentions and agendas"?

Ghosts of truth

Then you have a whole copy being driven by ghost voices who abhor attribution, yet who claim to represent the Prime Minister and the whole truth. The tone is decidedly gossipy. If they do know the truth, why won't they paste their names to that truth?
Why seek the licence of anonymity from the same society looking for authenticated truth?

And why are these ghost voices creating deeper complications for the Prime Minister? Through them, we now know the Prime Minister has another lover in the US, the lover he prefers to marry to Locardia. Is the media being redirected to another scandal for another stake-out?

Why then would the media need CIO and Information, if the Prime Minister's ghosts are doing such a wonderful job of directing the media through such abundant leads? Or are we being told that like a snake, the Prime Minister likes biting what he won't swallow? Told that he is a man always angling for the next prowl? Why seek to fight off, to dampen Locardia's hopes for marriage, by mortgaging the Prime Minister's marital future? Surely that future will come some day? Knowingly or unknowingly, these voices forebode the Prime Minister's affairs in future. What a high price to pay!

Another Masamvu?

The Zimbabwe Independent, itself host to these ghost voices, gives away too much for comfort, both for the PM and for itself: "Sources say more women will come out to join the fray. Intelligence sources say the clearest evidence that state intelligence services were pulling the strings in the fiasco was involvement of one of the women mentioned."

These unnamed sources are whetting media appetite for an even greater frenzy. Much worse, which intelligence sources is Muleya quoting, outside and independent of "state intelligence services"? Foreign intelligence? With what relationship with him, his paper and the MDC-T leader? It reminds me of WikiLeaks and the story of one Sydney Masamvu!

Story just begun

The upshot of all of the above is that the story has just begun. And it can only proceed at greater expense of the Prime Minister. A whole bevy of women have been lined up for him, each now with a profile in the media. His whole life is now dogged by this damaging sex story and wherever he goes, many will seek any evidence of bunga-bunga.

Whatever choices he will make martially are sure to draw comments and judgment. What a sordid life he is set to lead from now onwards! Much worse, Locardia and her family do not strike me as the type to bow out uneventfully.

Their handling of the whole matter and response to the Prime Minister's challenge shows far greater tact and depth than the Prime Minister could ever muster given a thousand more opportunities. So far, they have kept Locardia out of the fray, simply deploying her devastatingly, to embroil the Prime Minister further. All her steps are meticulous, all of them culturally supportable. Whatever her sins (and they are many), she comes across as a woman more sinned against than sinning. That is all she needs.

Extra strings

The fact of being pregnant, as we are told she is, can only be a bonus, one that makes her an unconditional candidate for society's unfettered sympathies. In spite of her riches (and I hope they are real), she has kowtowed before Tsvangirai's witty mother, like a good, cultured daughter-in-law would do.

And from the briefing which the mother gave in full presence of The Herald team, her mother-in-law looked happy, filled up that her son was once again settling in with a good wife. She may have won acceptance, both of the family and all of us the well meaning. One day too soon, she shall open her mouth to speak, all with the weight of someone who has not spoken before, amidst a hubbub of bubbling drivel, and we shall all listen.

I don't, I do, I am done

It is not hard to predict how events will move henceforth. She shall wait, assessing her prospects, weighing her chances in the whole relationship. If she establishes that her husband chooses to be foolish enough to run their love life like Harvest House, she, too, shall renounce the relationship, shall not feel obligated to defend it.

At that point, this man seeking the highest political office, shall discover that politics hath no fury like a woman spurned. His shall be a harvest of bitter thorns. So stretch it, stretch it out girl until such time that Mr Tsvangirai ill-affords controversy. Or the second scenario which is very possible and fairly common to Buherans, could kick in. It is that scenario of gradually softening denial as a strategy of riding out the storm. To the marriage you say "I don"t" to mean "I do"! You keep don't-ing, don't-ing, don't-ing until you forget the "-n't" through another permanent Freudian slip. And once you say "I do", you are done, and all shall be happy ever after!

KechiTwo!

In that scenario, the Prime Minister shall quietly send the Manases and Zvaipa to smoothen things with the in-laws, while he upholds and plays the reluctant, and even hostile. Meanwhile, Locardia's tummy will be growing big, bigger by the day, until two little Tsvangirais spew out, all to great communal joy!

After which, after which the Prime Minister will wring his hands, shrug his broad shoulders in "utter" helplessness, all to pass the bedroom threshold, shut the heavy wooden door behind, in the process firmly closing out the meddlesome world so madly driven by ulterior motives. When next he emerges and steps back into the world, Locardia anenge atonaka kechiTwo, possibly to issue more twins. Icho!

nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw