2005 Zim personalities of the year awards

2005 Zim personalities of the year awards

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I AM pleased to announce the 2005 Zimbabwe Personalities of the Year awards:

Most Notorious, Biggest Loser Of The Year: Robert Mugabe

He has become a figure of world-wide ridicule for presiding over the world’s steepest and most dramatic case of national decline. A talented speech reader whose skills in that regard are more fascinating because they are not underpinned by any substance. The world’s best dressed presidential failure, a perfect example of how much of post-independence Africa has lost precious time by focusing on the inconsequential. Spends more time on his wardrobe and appearances than on running the country and it shows in the state of Zimbabwe.

Plagued by a pathetic colonial mentality that has him pitifully pleading for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to notice him and respond to his taunts. Gets more infuriated the more he is ignored by him and tries ever more desperate stunts.

World’s Most Unenergetic Energy Minister: Mike Nyambuya.

Was “promoted” from the easy job of being a provincial governor to the impossible one of being the figurehead of an important sounding ministry at a time economic and political conditions mean he cannot succeed at his job.

Fuel and electricity shortages have worsened for reasons he can do absolutely nothing about. Given his utter helplessness and uselessness, the grand, reverential title of “Minister of Energy, Retired Major General Mike Nyambuya” lovingly and obediently used by the state propaganda services almost sounds like a mockery!

"Makosi had Zimbabweans all over the world helpless with laughter by cynically claiming that she may be persecuted by Mugabe’s goons if she were deported because she showed her tits on TV!"

CHIDO MAKUNIKE

Pie In The Sky Award: This goes to central banker Gideon Gono

Because his economic targets increasingly look like figures just pulled out of the clouds, not at all based on anything concrete or measurable. Has been undermined in his job at every turn by the man who gave him the job of “turning around” the economy, Mugabe. Made the naive mistake of believing Mugabe’s assurances that he would be given practical political support and a free hand. Just the latest of a long line of people who came under Mugabe’s wing with a measure of professional respectability only to have their reputations totally ruined by closeness to Mugabe.

The Jonathan Moyo Award For Hot Air And Bluster: goes to his former friend and colleague Patrick Chinamasa, Minister of “Injustice.”

Like Moyo, he has no convictions whatsoever, willing to say anything required of him to keep his position and totally unconcerned if his statements are self-contradictory. Likes to sound tough but reportedly broke down in tears and cried like a baby when Mugabe interrogated him about the putative Tsholotsho coup. Instead of firing him, crafty Mugabe realized that by giving Chinamasa another lease of political life, he would be so grateful for being saved from the political gallows he would go over-board to prove his loyalty to the throne.

That is exactly how it has worked out, with Chinamasa working tirelessly to prove to Mugabe how “radical” he is. Is now a kept man, totally in Mugabe’s pocket. Cut off all ties with former pal Moyo and reportedly recently took on a second wife to celebrate surviving Mugabe’s fury. But experience has shown that the more high profile you become as Mugabe’s defender, the further you have to fall when you have outlived your usefulness. Chinamasa is having the time of his life with his 15 seconds of notoriety, beating his chest, throwing his weight around and playing macho man, but the end may not be pretty.

Stunt-Woman Of The Year. Makosi Musambasi

Fascinating example of how not to behave in a foreign land. Had Zimbabweans all over the world helpless with laughter by cynically claiming to the British immigration authorities that she may be persecuted by Mugabe’s goons if she were deported because she showed her tits on TV!

And here is a person who is a nurse living in the age of AIDS, coming from a country with a high incidence of it who is so confused that she believes having unprotected sex on TV with a complete stranger is something to boast about!

Astonishing, embarrassing, pitiful example of someone completely led astray by the temporary bright lights of the celebrity culture.

Most Energetic Mugabe Propagandist: Tie between George Charamba and Tafataona Mahoso

Both are very energetic, they know what their master likes to hear and they deliver, never worrying if the reality of collapsing Zimbabwe is at odds with their propaganda. Although Mahoso was once famed for living a somewhat ascetic life, reportedly preferring to ride public transport to show solidarity with “the masses,” some have said he is a changed man since allegedly being rewarded with a fashionable bullet-proof luxury Pajero for his valiant efforts at defending the regime of Mugabe. Likes to pose as a white-hating super-Africanist but then confuses the issue by always quoting white authors in his weekly scholarly treatises in the state and ruling party media! Ah, the contradictions one gets entangled in singing for one’s supper!

I have always enjoyed Charamba’s entertaining, sometimes poetic bombast. But George like most Mugabe propagandists of recent times tends to get rather emotional in his defence of Mugabe, embarrassing and contradicting. There have been recent signs that he may be cracking under the pressure of defending the indefensible. If one wants to throw pot-shots from the safe cover of anonymity, one must not then be so reckless and excitable that one blows one’s cover so carelessly! And I would appeal to everybody to please not take home the anger, frustrations and failures of the office, it only entrenches the image of a brutal, violent regime always ready to bully and inflict injury on the defenceless in fits of rage. There’s nothing macho about such behaviour, any old abusive bully can engage in it!

The Humpty Dumpty Award: shared between leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change

They have so spectacularly destroyed the party they worked so hard to build in the face of brutal repression by Mugabe. They are the latest of many victims of Mugabe’s brilliantly diabolical plot to so destroy the country that he ends up controlling everything by his ability to dispense patronage. As the country falls apart at Mugabe’s direction, he has managed to so confuse the opposition party that they spend more time fighting over a chance for backdoor access to the fruits of patronage through his Senate red-herring than on finding ways to put the pressure on him.

The Better Late Than Never Award: Mutumwa Mawere

He now gives excruciating detail of his deals over the years to show how he was robbed of his business empire by the regime of Mugabe. But for many years after many ordinary Zimbabweans had begun to protest the rape of their country by its ruling clique, Mawere and other business types of his ilk did not mind being very close to the Mugabe regime as long as they thought it benefited their interests. Now he has become a latter day activist for the rule of law and property rights! Welcome to the struggle Mutumwa, I hope this is not just a Jonathan Moyo-like stunt of going whichever way the wind is blowing on a particular day!

Space and time constraints only allow me to award prizes to a small proportion of the long list of qualified, notorious candidates.

Chido Makunike is a social commentator and a New Zimbabwe.com columnist
CONTACT CHIDO: chidomakunike@yahoo.com
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