Crocodile tears – by Thabani Muleya Dube

20th June 2021

Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa never ceases to amaze, albeit for the wrong reasons. He has this amazing affinity for the wrong company, all in pursuit of glory. The Twabams of this world if you know what I mean.

Then this penchant to pursue glory even at the expense of families in mourning. Remember the “cool mortuary” moment in KweKwe a year or so ago where he proudly offered a price for the first family to put a corpse in a refurbished morgue. Talk of a moral pervert. An unscrupulous zealot. A man without a conscience.

Then there was this zeal he displayed over the passing on of Soul Musaka, the youthful Zimbabwean musician popularly known as Soul Jah Love in February this year.

Who will awaken the power drunk Government of our dear nation, Zimbabwe from their loot induced slumber?  Sleep walking in the corridors of plenty having forsaken their high calling of shielding a highly troubled nation, a calling  solemnly answered to  in not so far yester years  of sobriety. A high pitched cymbal!

On the matter of corpses in refurbished morgues, surely the solution is to address the issues that lead to the high mortality rate and reduced life expectancy in our nation. In the case of Soul Jah Love what was needed was practical support for him and all those suffering from his medical condition whilst he was still alive. THE YOUNG PROMISING ARTIST DID NOT NEED TO DIE. HE NEEDED INSULIN. In a well-governed country, all he would have done was to ring emergency services on a dedicated number at his time of need and he would have been saved.

Same applies to the famous victims of fire following the Road traffic accident enroute to Domboshava. Yes I mean the late wealthy Ginimbi. In a well governed country, fire services would have been at the scene in time to save those poor souls who died a horrible death in the localised inferno. Same applies to the thousands who perish in road traffic accidents every year due to the poor state of our roads.

The same rationale can be applied to victims of the pandemic. The irony of this is it can happen to anyone any time. Jetting to China may be an inaccessible privilege sometimes. It might come too late for some. Life has a way of proving how linear we are in the equation of existence. Just thinking.

Back to the matter of Soul Jah Love, I question the logic of spending so much on his burial and conferment of such a heroic burial. It can only be because E.D. Mnangagwa sought to get political mileage out of a sad situation. “Kusanyara – ukungabi lenhloni” as they would say in vernacular. Mobilising thousands of citizens to the event in the middle of a pandemic. I wonder how much that cost the state coffers. I also wonder how much insulin would have been purchased to prevent this from happening to someone else. Some governments in the progressive world have taken over the treatment bill for diabetes from their citizens to sustain lives. In Zimbabwe this is wishful thinking – a pipe dream under a ZANU-PF led government which has a penchant for pursuing power at any cost at the expense of its meek citizenry.

E.D. Mnangagwa’s moral compass is evidently broken. Given a chance, he can feast whilst sitting on top of corpses. It’s not beyond him.

If there was to be a prize for nutters, E.D. Mnangagwa would take it. He has no competition in that space.

About the author:-

Thabani Muleya Dube is a Zimbabwean human rights activist and the Chairperson of the South Branch of the UK Chapter of Restoration of Human Rights (ROHR) Zimbabwe and writes in her personal capacity in this instance.

She can be contacted by email; - tabb2mly@yahoo.co.uk