By Simon Peter Chamisa: Another stroke of genius only rivalled recently by the Smith debate, young, social media struggle pacesetters such as Lynne Stactia (Duchess of Bvukururu), Lisah Ncube, and Jessica Geraldine have called Jonathan Moyo’s bluff by giving him early and unsolicited assistance with his campaign to stand as the ZANU PF presidential candidate in the 2023 elections in Zimbabwe.
The youngsters – true heirs to the Magaisa BSR tradition of pacesetting political analysis – are bringing to our politics the more active, doing, practical side of things, as a complement to BSR-type analyses, waging creative social media struggles that are helping to braai previously sacred cows in Zimbabwean politics.
In an opinion piece on Bulawayo24, I previously made the following observation:
“The (Smith)…debate…outed some people that were pretending to be who they are not. Jonathan Moyo crept out of the closet to blatantly twerk for Mnangagwa, selling his academic skills as he cooks up new ways to stop Chamisa and CCC.
Jonathan is saying to Mnangagwa, pick me, pick me, and I will come and deal with the typhoon that is CCC by crafting a law and come up with and promote a narrative that says without structures they cannot participate in elections. Without denouncing Lisah Ncube by name they cannot be registered as a political party. Without standing at the corner of Samora and Julius Nyerere streets and shouting that Mnangagwa is far better than Smith they cannot be allowed to contest elections in Zimbabwe.”
Other social media pacesetters like Solomon Harudzibwi saw through Jonathan Moyo long back. When Moyo published his book on how elections were stolen in 2018, Harudzibwi and others saw that he was only doing it to spite Mnangagwa, not to advance democracy. The man doesn’t care about democracy. Hebert Banhire’s excellent archive always shows that to say Moyo is a flipflopper is probably a euphemism.
As his campaign for the presidency of ZANU PF gains momentum, Jonathan has now met his political Waterloo. He has lost the trust of both CCC people and ZANU PF Chinhu Cheduists.
In desperation, he and his sidekick, Edmund Kudzayi, came out guns blazing attacking Fadzayi Mahere and Nelson Chamisa, both of whom had not provoked them in any way shape or form. Edmund became nothing short of pathetic, threatening to “expose” Fadzayi socially.
But Magaisa left behind a well-trained social-media-warrior battalion of 486 000 young Zimbabwean followers who are conscious and critical-minded. These owls (mazizi) immediately let Kudzayi know that they were waiting for him. Kudzayi had to withdraw with his tail between his legs, except for a pathetic whimper that took the form of a forged private message exchange yaakazvifonera, claiming someone that he respects had pleaded with him to spare Mahere.
It was almost unbelievable, the ineptitude. In doing this, Kudzayi dismally failed in three ways. One, he disappointed voyeurs who politically didn’t care about Fadzayi and were just salivating waiting for the dish Kudzayi had threatened to serve.
Two, he angered mazizi who respect Fadzayi for being a symbol of their fight against Chinhu Cheduists.
Three, he pooped on his own credibility, by showing that he could be a deranged misogynist, picking a fight with a woman unprovoked, and then failing to live up to even that misstep.
Having failed spectacularly with the asinine threat to release pictures, Kudzayi then went on to do a hatchet job on his Kukurigo publication, delivering a story the speculative nature and malice of which would be easily visible to any grade five pupil. This only added legal woes to an already shameful few days for Kudzayi, as Mahere’s lawyers did not waste time in issuing a letter of demand requiring retraction and apology.
On what must be their daily check-in calls between Nairobi and Harare, Moyo and Kudzayi probably wondered why the mud wasn’t sticking. “But these people celebrated when I exposed Madame Chigumba of ZEC. Double standards!” I can almost hear Edmund saying.
No. Zimbabweans know the difference. When they celebrated the exposure of Chigumba, they were saying, there, we are throwing eggs at you Chigumba, one of the arrogant, those who rule by might not by right. What else can we do against you powerful bandits who are untouchable?
Yet in Mahere people see themselves. A fellow ordinary Zimbabwean struggling to take the country back from the Chinhu Chedu bandits. As one woman put it, mina if Mahere wants my husband I would gladly give her and I become the second wife: she is doing a great job for all of us to free our country.
Vuka Jonathan! Vuka Edmund! You can fool some people some time; you can’t fool all the people all the time. Look how much you have fallen hard this time round.
Simon Peter Chamisa is a Bulawayo-based analyst.
