The Mutambara factor

The Mutambara factor

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By Bekithemba Mhlanga

IT IS difficult to ignore the Arthur Mutambara effect. It's all over the place and forcing people, organisations, men, women and children to take positions about Zimbabwe.

Everyone senses that this time around, something could just happen. A few months ago Mutamabara's entry onto the political scene was being derided as some desperate move by an ethnic clique wanting to establish some sort of national colour by having a Shona leader.

All this now sounds like claptrap in the light of what is happening in Zimbabwe.

Take Morgan Tsvangirai, for instance. When the whole of Zimbabwe was urging him to lead them out of the hell that the country has become, he flatly said he was no martyr and would not embark on a silly exercise of such folly.

It was refreshing then to learn that all this has changed and that he is now ready to be interred kumbudzi for the sake of a free Zimbabwe. I am sure Susan Tsvangirai will have something to say about this seeing that the cake she once fashioned as Zimbabwe House for her better half never saw the day of light in Chancellor Avenue.

Not much has changed to convince me that Tsvangirai is simply not reacting to the Mutambara effect in his grandstanding. What he needs now is to stop speaking in tongues and tell people what he expects them to be talking about to each other in bars, shops, schools or even soccer matches. Don't leave them to their imagination Morgan – leadership is about action and not position!

And surely no one would have missed the energy around Nelson Chamisa. The spokesperson has never been more enterprising. He can be at a rally without being there! He counts more accurately than anybody else and therefore is in a better position to tell us how many people attended the Tsvangirai rallies at any one time. He has even mastered the art of swearing at all and sundry in public without flinching a muscle – a preserve that once belonged Zanu PF. His combative mood leaves you in no doubt that the he is a man on a mission. The question only is which mission? Is it to deflate the Mutambara crusade or to mobilise against the Mugabe charade? Its not in dispute that this is not the Chamisa we knew before Mutambara came round .

The Mutambara factor is all over the place, even in Zanu PF. The succession debate is said to have reached a crescendo within Zanu PF. Didymus Mutasa is not speaking to Shamuyarira, we are told. Gideon Gono has a public spat with Murerwa, say reports. Everyone feels that the stakes have been raised so much now and that anytime in the not too distant future, the power balance will shift and no one is prepared to see the future happening without them.

One cannot ignore it in other areas. The other day we had Reverend Obadiah Msindo's position raising all sorts of well founded noises within the women's groups and the next we knew the poor chap had been arraigned before the courts facing rape charges. He belonged to the untouchables a few months ago.

Oh! and there is that sorry musician who made a name for himself by likening Tony Blair to an ablution facility. Now he has been kicked out of a property that never was his. A few years ago Deputy Minister Kasukuwere gave this man a whole splosh of Wonga so that he could continue his tirade at a concert about Tony Blair. He must now know that he has been flushed down the pits. Now that is a real toilet my friend! How things have changed.

As any first year political science student will tell you, those in power simple do not hand it over. It must be wrested from them, and in a democracy, this happens peacefully. In dictatorship there is no guarantee that this happens peacefully as well. Now we await the Mutambara effect on this turf.

Bekithemba Mhlanga is a Zimbabwean journalist based in London. He can be contacted at: bekithemba68@yahoo.com
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