MUCKRAKER: Surprise! The surprises of our Owner’s rule

Being a Rip van Winkle of some sort — that little chap that slept for 20 years only to miss a lot — our Owner needs to do anything and everything to justify the 2033 heist that he is plotting.

This week our Owner was at it again; making another newsy surprise visit — this time to his former workplace, parly, where he cooled his feet some years ago after that historic shellacking by Blessing Chebundo, then of the original MDC.

Being a Rip van Winkle of some sort — that little chap that slept for 20 years only to miss a lot — our Owner needs to do anything and everything to justify the 2033 heist that he is plotting.

Noticing how he is fast getting out of touch with lots of basics (no one is suggesting senility lest his thought police scream “Underlining and or Insulting Ownership!”), they thought it a good idea to take him around places in the name of surprise/unscheduled/unannounced visits in the hope of rekindling his memory. Well, which criminal said desperate situations call for desperate measures?

In which case who is Muckraker not to help contributing to the suggestion of a few other places that are in desperate need of such surprise visits by our Ownership? Next, he should consider making a surprise visit to Chikurubi to see for himself how good the Second Republic has turned it into a truly penal facility.

He might then pay other unannounced visits to any of the country’s army camps where the furniture left by the Rhodesian government has decided to go into extinction. Another unscheduled visit to the police, where food rations are being looted and junior officers live in horse stables, should thoroughly impress our Owner.

Then tours of NRZ, GMB, Matapi Flats in Mbare, where sewer rain is the eighth wonder of the world, or Zengeza in Chitungwiza where sewerage is now a scatological part of life; and even going as far as Chireya in Gokwe where cotton farmers do community service. There are just too many places that are waiting for those surprise visits … just too many!

Our own Jehoram

Last week Sydney Gata, the chap who owned Zesa in the very same way our Owner owns this country, decided to die!

Remember last October, when that fellow boldly declared we would be nostalgic for power cuts by December 2025? Claiming to have found the magic wand to banish his own creation forever, he instead plotted—not to end the outages—but to end himself, once and for all!

In his honour, his too many relatives, friends and their children and grandchildren at the power utility decided to switch the whole country off in the name of a “system disturbance”. Being effectively his own personal property as he regarded it — in the very same fashion our Owner does — Muck is very sure that the Gutter-man had included the power utility in his last will and testament (just as our Owner would certainly be doing), wait until the document is deposited at the office of the Master of the High Court where the too many concubines and their offspring would be fighting over his loot.

Being joined in the hip with our Owner as the Gutter-man was, it was only natural that he was made a national hero. Who would dare oppose that? Obviously feeling ashamed about this, in his graveside eulogy, our Owner felt obliged to justify the broadened category of heroes, explaining that those bestowed the honour “stand as a towering symbol of true patriotism, selfless dedication and persistent commitment to our motherland, Zimbabwe”; in the process leaving many to wonder where the Gutter-man even remotely fitted, his long relationship with Zesa that dates back from 1982 having only served to make the power utility a byword for uselessness.

Typical of the animal called human being in its basest form, pursuit for riches and honour becomes an obsession … to try and fill in that gaping hole within itself. After looting almost everything that was not fixed to the ground, including awarding themselves fake qualifications — and still not getting satisfied — they have since extended the looting spree to hero status.

So, this new hero category caters for relatives and friends of our Owner & Co. The beauty of hero status is that it is the end  and good riddance end that many Zimbos only look forward to for lots of people.

The Bible, in 2 Chronicles 21:20 talks of Jehoram, a king of Judah whose death no one regretted. Other versions actually say he departed “without being desired” or “unloved”. Such was our Gutter-man, the man who effectively condemned us to perennial darkness.

Our Owner still has a chance to avoid such an unloved departure. That is if he cares at all, hardened as he appears to be.

Addled threats

Police Commissioner-General Cde Stephen Mutamba has started making a show of acting to restore the force’s thoroughly soiled image, so we are told.

As part of this initiative, there are reports that police officers would be undergoing some form of retraining. Not a very bad idea because lots of the officers behave more like members of a militia than a professional police force.

Muck might also need to remind Cde Mutamba that as long as a fundraising motive is tucked into law enforcement, there is a problem ... it borders on extortion and encourages corruption, which he claims to be determined to fight.

If the officers can extort motorists for the benefit of their employer’s retention fund, what would stop them from falling into the temptation of going an extra mile to extort for their own back pockets? This is what makes ordinary citizens — the so-called members of the public — hate the force with a passion.

We are told that members of the force have been banned from engaging in the passenger transport business, both directly and through proxies. We have heard about this before, and before. We will only believe that this is no longer the addled threat that it has always been when we see a list of at least 100 police officers who would have been prosecuted for violating this order.

As for Muck personally, he will only start taking Cde Mutamba seriously when he starts seeing all police officers in uniform displaying name tags showing their full names and force numbers. Until then, he will treat the threatened action as nothing but a toothless dog’s bark.

Freedom without being free

This month, Zimbos commemorated the 26th anniversary of the death of Father Zimbabwe, Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo. After investing a good part of his life fighting for freedom, the thoroughly dejected veteran nationalist wrote in his 1983 memoirs, The Story of My Life: “The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late … it is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free.”

If Nkomo was dejected more than 40 years ago, we can only wonder how he would have felt now as Gukurahundists busy themselves with the process of trying to sanitise themselves.

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