The Sunday News
Highway to Success
TODAY we intend to unmask Nyati. Remember we know Nyati as the old man who forcibly married Sofia, Joseph Takundwa’s daughter. He is the man responsible for Sofia’s imprisonment. The author uses him to expose the evils of corruption perpetrated by people who are well to do in society. Through Nyati we also see that money is the root of all evil. Nyati is so powerful in the community that he daringly declares all his bad deeds knowing fully well that nothing is going to happen to him.
In a chapter dedicated to him, Nyati boldly declares that he is a chameleon with the fangs of a cobra. He says he has successfully shed off his past and put on the colours of a new rainbow. What a dramatic change! We are not surprised to hear what he is about to say concerning this about turn. These are war tendencies whereby people keep on changing from one political party to the other as long as they play their cards well. Nyati’s past was dirty as he worked against the revolution.
This story takes place before the country gained independence. He used to work for the Rhodesian army, notorious for killing civilians and guerillas. How did he change his colours? At independence, he had already accumulated a substantial amount of wealth through his activities during the war. He used to sell out the guerillas to the Rhodesian forces and was handsomely paid for providing vital information about the liberation forces. He would seize every opportunity to donate money to the ruling party.
Nyati would seize every opportunity to sing praises about the “consistency and infallibility” of the leader. The master stroke was when he equated the leader to the second Christ. Within a short space of time, the party and his name, Nyati had become one, both in body and in spirit. There was nothing about party policy and ideology that he did not know. Overnight, he became the guru of the theory and practice of scientific socialism based on the theories of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.
He became the embodiment of the spirit of socialist transformation. “Down with capitalism! Down with exploiters! Abasha imperialismo! Such slogans became his political trademark! His efforts did not go unnoticed as he was appointed executive director of a very important government department that dealt with “Social Services and Social Transformation.” He immediately formed a number of briefcase companies which supplied all the goods and services that it needed. He calls that making hay while the sun shines.
He is so blunt about his actions as to say: “It only takes a fool to fail to grab a chance that presents itself in such broad daylight.” Within a year he had become a multi-millionaire. The 1982 drought presented to him a unique opportunity. Together with his friend and homeboy whom he had helped with the tender to supply grain to drought stricken areas of the country, he worked out a foolproof method of overcharging the government. He harvested a profit of about five million dollars from the drought.
The writer clearly exposes the mechanisms of corruption. Nyati was introduced to the “Sisida” car racket scheme by a friend who was a top government official. The Sisida, the new car from Japan, had suddenly become the car of the moment; the car that every man of substance would want to be seen driving. However, since the car’s demand outstripped its supply, it could only be got by those who had contacts in very high places. Nyati immediately seized that chance. Through the many government officials he was acquainted with, he was able to obtain dozens of Sisida cars which he sold at ten times the buying price.
Within a short space of time, Nyati was doing a lot more business than all the car dealers in Harare. All he had to do to sustain that venture was to make sure that the top government officials would always get their slice of the cake. Journalists, like what we saw of teachers before, are slandered. Nyati uses derogatory terms calling them little nosy journalists. They are lambasted for doing their job, that is reporting facts as they are on the ground.
By the time journalists discovered that racket, he was already home and dry. He resigned from government and registered his company. All the mud-slinging of the now famous “car-gate” scandal left Nyati unscathed. No one could prove that he had exerted any form of influence on any top government official. He asks: “What’s so illegal about making money for oneself, anyway?” What Nyati forgets is that he made money through vile means. He is so much shrouded in corruption such that he takes people who question how he got rich as jealous. He talks of it as petty jealousy.
Nyati hits out at journalists who dare write about his corrupt tendencies. He calls them poor little journalists who have just learnt how to read and write and go about trying to create mountains out of nothing. “The problem with poor people is that they cannot stand the sight of someone not as poor as they are. Place the same little journalists who like to write about so called corruption into the same positions and see if they won’t grab the chance, unless they are very foolish of course.”
It is a carry over as Nyati continues saying: “Instead of writing about real criminals and murderers who are busy killing people out there, they waste time writing false stories about honest people who are trying to eke a living for themselves.” He says at times he thinks their new government is too soft, if it were him, he would simply ban the newspaper and banish the little nosy reporter. He calls it treason. Why is Nyati so viral about journalists if he is innocent? Is it not clear that the so-called little and nosy journalists are performing their duty as expected?
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