The Sunday News
Micheal Mhlanga
Dear Advocate Man of the cloth
Mad(e) on Campus
Student politics and activism is good and bad. It is good when it nurtures one to be a responsible citizen who graduates to a national inspiration for all those he has been a senior to and becomes the beacon of an ideal leader in national politics, a plied and genteel captain of industry. It is the preceding SRC presidents and council members who remark and inspire railing executives and other students to be involved in student politics should they make it in life. It is only the “good” who become the finest alumni exhibit when they plough into mainstream community through their munificent political roles and economic perspicacity when they become both private and public proprietors. To the college deans, they stand as the accurate case study of a successful student politician to ever graduate from the institution.
Student politics is equally a bad activity and association when it intoxicates many who fail to graduate from the college not because they are leaden, but because they elect not to focus on the reason of enrolling but expend their time cramming speeches made by dead man so that they quote and chant to angry mobs of students from whom their saps of life is injected.
To them, commonness mistaken for popularity is caffeine that intoxicates their thinking, speech and judgement. Reality becomes blurry and they assume that campus speech and life outside is the same. It takes time to rehabilitate these “patients” whose campaign was laden with “lies” about how they will build the college library, demolish the dining hall and invite private public partners to improve the college menu, and quote Chinua Achebe, Senghor Tourre, Franz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, Steve Bantu Biko and a few common African proverbs that send the college swarm into an ecstatic frenzy who on the day of voting do not really ruminate hard about their choices, but simply make sure they are registered and vote.
The likes of these common figures are voted into college office not because of sound and reasonable policies, but simply because they look handsome, or they are frequent revellers at a common nightclub and they are charismatic (a common feature in modern religion). The sad reality is that it’s usually a sixteenth of the total enrolled students who vote for these charlatans who reside in that stupor until their expiry days. Should one not handle the post-college politics transition very well, they become perennially blotto, intoxicated by a punch of college politics whose mileage is drawn from cheap shots of populist rhetoric, a sham of speech if you may ask me.
This is the infirmity that one political leader has not been treated off since his hey days when they mistakenly handed him the name Wamba dia Wamba (Wamba — ula Manga). Tracing good and verifiable history, one learns that Nelson Chamisa (Advocate Man of the cloth) was a fiery and feisty student politician who was unfortunate not to find a political tutor in 1999 who would properly and properly induct him into mainstream politics. It is saddening that 18 years down the line he is still drunk from the student politics punch he binged while he was a toddler and is ignorant of basic diplomacy such as lying about other Heads of States and what implications that has on his party, Zimbabwe and the lied about Head of States. The rapturous nature of his reckless utterance which are beyond an exaggerated populist mantra are affecting all of us. He is speedily creating and effecting a bad impression about Zimbabweans and we should not ignore that.
Oh! Advocate Man of the cloth you are everything wrong about students’ politics.
One friend of mine last week, a young journalist said “Chamisa represents everything wrong about students’ politics”. I totally agree with him. It is also despairing to find that some of the best young minds are silent on the booklet of lies that’s being bound every time the man speaks and they chant that there is a continental Generational Consensus, I ask, are young people coalescing and agreeing to be silent on a bad trait which they denounce when done by other parties?
Are lies by Chamisa sanctified and spiritual such that we should not reprimand or even punish him? Is Chamisa now a religion that we do not seek facts but only faith to believe what he says? How then will we hold a man accountable for things that cannot be verified, and if done so, we always find that he is economic with the truth? Think about it, had Chamisa lied once this year, the world would have forgiven him, but seemingly since we entered 2018, Nelson Chamisa has made it a point to greet each new month with a lie.
Calculate the lies . . .
“I met Donald Trump and he promised US$15 billion.”
“Nkomo’s family offered me his sceptre.”
“I was invited by the Queen of England.”
“I was the Rwanda ICT consultant,” (that’s what he meant on Rwanda)
In all his self-decidedly claims, the respondents have denounced his assertions. To be honest, it is a shame for a man of his stature (an evangelical pastor) to lie. He defies everything Christianity stands for — let me remind him of Exodus 20:2-17.
The advocate has lied in Mutare, Bulawayo, Harare and recently in Gwanda — such a bridle of inter-provincial lies. At this rate one wonders if his campaign in the remaining six provinces will add six more lies with a few weeks to polling, and an extremely ludicrous populist spaghetti roads and bullet train rhetoric. That is the problem with imported student politics populism, it does not check and verify feasibility, its quick to ululate and scream “maUBA nemaUSA mushuga” — this is where reasoning mortality emanates from. There is a serious need for refreshing the software of imperial logic at that stage to that group before it flushes out more like the Advocate-Man of cloth.
Advocate — Man of the cloth’s record on truth and accuracy is astonishingly poor. So far, having fact checked more than six of his claims and rated all of them as Mostly False, False or “Pants on Fire” (I reserve this last designation for a claim that is not only inaccurate but also ridiculous). With totally nothing well thought out to campaign with after the death of “Mugabe must go” and visibly Zanu-PF regaining its lost constituency, feelings, not facts, are what matter in this sort of campaigning peddled by Advocate Man of the cloth.
His post-truth politics has many parents which are corrosive forces at play. One is anger as many voters feel let down and left behind, while the elites who are in charge of the Alliance have thrived since the passing on of Save (Morgan Tsvangirai) whose untimely departure gave offices to some nonentities. When politics is like pro-wrestling, society pays the cost. Advocate Man of the cloth’s insistence that Rwandan President Paul Kagame — not “Kagama” actually met him and requested his services precludes a serious debate over how Rwandans perceive Zimbabweans in general when a leader lies at that level — top-room lies.
It is tempting to think that, when policies sold on dodgy prospectuses start to fail, lied-to supporters might see the error of their ways. The worst part of post-truth politics, though, is that this self-correction cannot be relied on. When lies make the political system dysfunctional, its poor results can feed the alienation and lack of trust in institutions that make the post-truth play possible in the first place.
In all this, Advocate Man of the cloth has a personality that allows him to be evasive, to live with lies and keep a straight face.
Not all people can do that. That is why many people are not willing to serve in a political role. They detest the process they will have to follow, a process I believe is an inevitable by-product of the political system we chose to have. Advocate Man of the cloth is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics — a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to defend his claim to the extent that his followers and he start to believe him. And he is not alone.
Contrary to the prophecies that truth in politics is doomed, I am encouraged by the effect that fact-checking is having. When friends conclude despondently that the truth does not matter for now, I remind them that people have not started voting yet. I do not take euphoria seriously because data suggests that most people do not settle on a candidate until much closer to casting their vote. In the end, it is the voters who will punish or reward candidates for what they have said on the campaign trail. I am confident that Zimbabweans have the information they need to help them choose wisely. Always remember Exodus 20 when deciding.
Till the next lie.
Yikho khona lokhu!
