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Stephen Mpofu
One would certainly not be accused of flagrant exaggeration for suggesting that the period immediately after Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa assumed the position of President of Zimbabwe was replete with curiosities.

First, airwaves quivered with wild suggestions from all kinds of people about who should have been appointed to which position in President Mnangagwa’s new Cabinet and about who should have been shoved in the shed from the old team of ministers.

But, surely, mere names of personalities do not automatically correspond with, or presuppose, excellent performances by the public’s wild choices about who should fill which Cabinet slot or who should not be considered for a ministerial post.

The new Cabinet ministers and those that remained in government will have to prove the stuff of which they are made in the critical period ahead which should see an economic turnaround for better with more jobs created, corruption met with draconian measures and the country set on the path towards a brave new future for all.

However, the most sordid or mother  of all curiosities as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein might have said, was the move by members of the MDC Alliance along with a human rights passenger to appear before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee where those gentlemen took turns to, of all things, call for economic sanctions against their own motherland to be maintained.

The quartet — Nelson Chamisa, Tendai Biti, Dewa Mavhinga and Peter Godwin — might wish for a hint of orphic wisdom to consider a paradigm shift in their search for amicable and honourable solutions to the political challenges facing this country; otherwise they risk ending up on the spike of political history in this country for not helping with its political and economic re-engagement with other members of the global village.

For instance, what was the morality of their rushing with heads held in their hands to America, a self professed enemy of this country on account of the sanctions that have helped to bring our economy to its knees, instead of engaging the incumbent government to try to find a lasting solution to the challenges that we all face?

Moreover, President Mnangagwa has pledged to re-engage the international community to try to end Zimbabwe’s isolation especially after the introduction of the land reform programme.

But Zimbabwe is not a province of America for political leaders, or so-called leaders to rush there with caps crushed in their hands seeking lasting solutions to the problems that Zimbabweans face at this period in time, and for which the US is also hugely responsible.

Or does the beeline to Washington by those men suggest that they as well as other members of their political alliance are running dogs of Western imperialism to the extent that they even pleaded with the US government to ensure that next year’s harmonised elections in this country will be free, fair and credible?

Indeed, should not the alliance consulted with their own regional organisations, Sadc, as well as the continental body, the African Union for solutions to the economic downturn in our country before rushing off to mother America as though that country were a repository of solutions, social, political and economic?

Are Zimbabweans being given a glimpse of how the MDC Alliance will behave — by regarding Sadc and AU as irrelevant — should it get into power?
As things turned out, there was outrage even in the global diaspora as some Zimbabweans watching the Senate hearing virtually smote their hearts as it were, in disgust at what they saw.

It is obvious that the alliance is fishing for funding to put it in good stead in campaigning against the ruling Zanu-PF in the forthcoming elections.

But blind pauperism should not blind the opposition political parties in this country to the realisation that they will find it difficult to disengage themselves from their financial benefactors should good luck come their way and they find themselves in power tomorrow.

Moreover, it would be naive of anyone to believe that members of the MDC Alliance, who suffer the same brunt of sanctions as the rest of Zimbabweans will applaud the call by their leaders for the economic embargo to continue to haunt them and their families.

In any case any continued political and economic ostracism of Zimbabwe runs counter to the spirit of letting bygones be bygones and re-engagement in a postmodern world where unity and togetherness should be the golden rule of the global village.

Then there was something even more intriguing with the Americans saying the present government should address the political disturbances in Matabeleland which were quelled by the Fifth Brigade, resulting in losses of lives before the illegal economic sanctions could be lifted by America.

But what justification has America involving herself in a matter that was purely domestic and which only Zimbabweans are better qualified to solve?

Or is America living out its policeman-of-the-world status by wielding an axe at a stye in Zimbabwe’s eye as well as in the eyes of other, smaller nations while a tree looms large in that country’s own eye?

For instance, America destabilised Iraq, resulting in the death of that country’s president Saddam Hussein, alleging that he kept “weapons of mass destruction”  but which never existed, so it turned out to be.

The reason for destroying Hussein was that America was enraged by being denied a continual swim as it were, in oil under Saddam’s charge and yet who continues to make noise about the bygones in Iraq as well as in Libya where America was also deeply involved in that country’s destabilisation?

The biggest one is about the weapon of continuing mass destruction of lives around the globe, HIV and Aids.

The US obviously knows the country that produced the virus which causes Aids in a laboratory project originally intended for the destruction of black people but which went berserk, producing the Aids virus which knows no colour.

Or is America afraid of that big country? If not, why does not that policeman of the world condemn the Aids virus producer in the same way as it vilifies the Zanu-PF government for the Gukurahundi intervention in Matabeleland, for instance?

Curiosa and curiosa.

Above all, President Mnangagwa has pledged that the harmonised elections will meet all required standards and the US should not therefore be seen as the guarantor of credible, free and fair elections in this country.

In any case Sadc and the AU should be regarded as the legitimate monitors of elections on this continent.

That they did so with success in the recent Angolan elections posits similar successes in monitoring future elections elsewhere on the African continent.

The days of Big Brother imperialist powers as overseers and guarantors of everything excellent on the African soil are gone and should be buried with history while, on the other hand Africa should resolutely adhere to international standards in order for the continued flow of investment capital which only cordial international relations will guarantee.