Letter from America:with KENNETH MUFUKA
For those who may not remember, Sibusiso B. Moyo, (PhD) is the man who became the face of the November 2017 coup. As I write, after his spate with the United States ambassador, Brian Nichols, I am beginning to wonder whether the brother has not lost some of his beans and whether he lives on planet earth.
Picking up a fight with US President Donald Trump, a dirty street fighter, is playing with dirt (madakanana). One cannot predict where the fight will end. With Trump, anything can reach “another level” without anybody knowing what happened.
Moyo is supposed to be a cool brother, who has learned a thing or two.
My quarrel with Moyo, and the whole Zanu PF gang is that they seem to forget lessons from the past quickly, if they ever learned them at all. They seem to live in a make believe world of their own, which explains why they act stupidly in broad daylight.
Brother Moyo uttered a threat to brother Nichols in such language that has been associated with Zanu PF apparatchiks, who visit opponents by night.
After condemning Nichols’ behaviour as aiding and abetting opposition politics, the brother went bananas. In Zanu PF speak, he uttered these ominous words.
“We have the means to bring this to an end, should we deem it necessary, or should we be pushed too far,” so says Moyo.
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The whole point of going to school is illustrated by my great schoolmaster, JMD Manyika. “Kenny my boy, the trouble with you is that you jump before you look.”
Moyo represents a government that is accused of “disappearing people” like Dr Peter Magombeyi. Magombeyi turned up in the bushes, a week later, with internal lacerations and disorientation of the mind.
As I speak, in one week alone, I have before me two videos of police taking out a customer from a petrol line and beating him up. The other video pertains to two policemen with whips beating up a street vendor. And we can go on and on.
Moyo’s utterance is called an unspecified threat, and therefore ominous.
Who is in the wrong?
During the anti-sanctions march, October 25, Nichols reminded Zimbabweans on his Twitter account of the following.
Zimbabwe’s corrupt business practices are partly to blame for the impoverishment of the country, he said. He gave a few examples, which serve only as a tip of the ice-berg. The examples he gave prove my point that Zimbabwe is the richest country in the world and is not short of money. Money is being wasted.
Nichols says on his Twitter handle US$840 million splashed on command agriculture is not likely to achieve its goals. Three planes were leased at US$51 million and were never used. A diamond heist of US$10 million was shipped (presumably to the East) for training purposes and disappeared into thin air.
There is a long tradition in Zanu PF that painful truth must not be said. Secondly, there is another longstanding tradition in Zanu PF that no matter how badly they misbehave, the perpetrators of such misbehaviour must be rewarded. Here is an example.
When I am home, I make a point of paying a courtesy call at the US embassy. Over the last 10 years, USAid has been the life-line for starving Zimbabweans. When we include HIV and Aids support, World Food Programme, and this year’s US$66,8 million for starving Zimbabweans, the total is well over US$1 billion over the last 15 years.
The US government is, therefore, the largest source of aid to Zimbabwe. One would expect Zimbabwe’s Moyo to tread carefully, especially when Trump is listening.
Moyo then picks out a fight and curses out the ambassador.
There is no argument that sanctions hurt. I have two sources. The Chindori Chininga Parliamentary Report (2012), says that Zimbabwe’s diamond sales are conducted through shady dealers in Hong Kong in order to bypass US sanctions. These shady dealers charge 25% discount.
Nor is there any purpose in denying that sanctions (Zimbabwe Democracy Recovery Act) was imposed after the confiscation of white-owned farms.
The second source is from former prime minister Ian Smith. While Rhodesian sanctions busters carried on their businesses honestly, there was one incident where an arms deal went wrong and $5 million went missing.
The US government has nothing to do with vast amounts of revenues that disappear each month from public coffers while doctors and civil servants go without pay and supplies.
Brother Nichols is saying the truth. Moyo’s reaction follows a pattern of abusive behaviour. I attended then US ambassador Harry Thomas’ farewell party in 2018. A thoroughly ambient brother, who wished nothing but good for his motherland, nevertheless, he had been subjected to hellish words.
The Herald, April 19, 2017, undressed the brother in public (Joice Mujuru’s idiom). The title was: What is this N-(word) still doing here?” For good measure, other US ambassadors were included. “But the likes of Harry Thomas and Bruce Wharton…they are devils.”
Shamelessness
To hear our brothers in Zanu PF curse out the US imperialists, one would imagine that they (the US) were responsible for the diamond heists that resulted in a US$10 billion loss, or that all the corruption in parastatals is linked in any way to the US.
Trump loves a fight. If Moyo lives on planet earth, he would know that the world does not owe Zimbabwe anything and that Trump is a street fighter.
Trump’s reaction is unpredictable. Trump is like a drunken Irishman, who joins a street fight without knowing what the fight was for. Trump can easily cut off food aid to the eight million starving Zimbabweans.
There is really nothing called illegal sanctions. If the US refuses to trade with Zimbabwe, and cuts off Visa, MasterCard and American Express Services, there is nothing we can do about it.
Moyo, who should know better, can begin by giving the police commissioner simple advice. Police should not walk the streets with whips; they are tempted to use them. My advice is to provide a public lock-up place for miscreants. There, they must be provided with pop corn and ice cream while they wait for their tribesmen to pick them up. Treating miscreants kindly would be more humiliating than beating them up with rhino hides.
Good deeds start at home. Before you (Moyo) start acting out and cutting up about Nichols, be good to your people.
l Ken Mufuka is a patriot who writes from the US. His latest book is entitled; Life and Times of Robert Mugabe: Dream Betrayed. It is sponsored by INNOV Bookshops in Zimbabwe and can be found in the world at kenmufuklabooks.com
