Staying away from the stay-away

SCRUTATOR

LAST week the comrades from the opposition were choking with anger over those freebies they call proportional representation seats.

They said from Monday this week there would be an indefinite stay-away.

But how their bloated egos have been deflated after the stay-away actually steered workers away from their homes.

It was such a monumental flop that even its fervent proponents could not help but admit it.

They were left with egg all over their faces. The workers simply stayed away from the stay-away. 

I have a feeling that even the most zealous of opposition members stayed away from the stay-away.

Now we are being fed some superficial theories to explain how this ill-thought-out protest turned out to be a damp squib.

Scrutator saw it coming.

I cannot just understand at what point this brouhaha over freebie seats became a national agenda.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise that the opposition had over-sold this idea.

When you are busy hustling for food for your family you don’t want an over-fed party leader telling you that one of his bootlickers had failed to get into parliament because some free seats were pinched. 

You don’t need a politician raising hell over mundane issues like the sun shining too bright or the moon coming out to early.

Perhaps those leaders should learn to gauge the mood before they start exaggerating their weight on the political arena.

Perhaps one of the few people who stayed away was the sub-editor at that local news agency.

Of course, whenever he or she has been there the difference has hardly been noticeable.

This week we had the news agency referring to a “purported stay-away”.

If we keep watching, we will be seeing “alleged lions” popping in copy.

Anyway, we’ve become so accustomed to the agency’s sub-editors perpetually staying away from work that I will not dare pop your eyes out of their sockets with details of some of their clangers.

But I must admit I was taken aback by an instalment from the news agency this week.

The Mokhotlong Magistrate Court last week remanded Chitja Chitja, 23, from Mafolaneng in custody for allegedly killing Tlala Thebe, 31, reports the agency.

According to a police report, the accused hired a donkey from Thebe to carry dagga to Natal, South Africa, and promised to pay him M200 upon return.

But when he returned from Natal, Chitja did not return the donkey or pay the fee to Thebe.

The report said Thebe approached Chitja who instead of paying up turned violent and shot him at point blank.

The deceased had an open wound on the head and on the back.

Scrutator would like to extend her condolences to the family and friends of the unfortunate man.

I’m left wondering how much the accused had smoked.

Does anyone remember one paper advocating the legalisation of matekoane?

Look how it has cost a young man his life.

And if anyone thinks I’m over-dramatising the effects of matekoane, dare go through some of our newspapers.

What would happen if it was legalised when we already see headlines like “Aids survivor dies”?

Or someone telling us that “forore” is interchangeable with “furore”?

Or someone decapitating models’ heads in a picture.

Can someone please give me a pull before I check into rehab — thanks to, we can assume, reporters, sub-editors and editors always high on matekoane.

It’s normally very un-African to speak ill of the dead.

But Scrutator is wondering how most Zimbabweans have received the news of the death of the country’s vice president, Joseph Msika, on Tuesday.

Here is a man who, together with his boss Robert Mugabe, condemned Zimbabweans to a life of untold suffering and penury.

The two have over the past decade overseen the crumbling of Zimbabwe’s economy — once regarded as the breadbasket of Africa.

And they have refused to go while they still have a little life in them so that they can have time to tell their grandchildren how well they marshalled Zimbabwe into prosperity and democracy.

Just last year, Msika and his superior were accused of unleashing security forces and party zealots on defenceless citizens whose only crime was to reject Mugabe in elections.

He’s gone.

Scrutator is tempted to say ‘a little too late’.

And many Zimbabweans might be wondering: why not him?

I shall not speak anymore.

One thing that Mugabe is determined to achieve though is to die in office.

His three deputies have done it already.

And we all know how Old Bob has refused to let his deputies retire on health grounds.

What is he afraid of?

That he won’t be interred at the country’s national shrine originally meant for heroes?

Or that someone will drag him, once he loses the immunity that comes with his presidency, before the courts for all the crimes against humanity he’s accused of?

Msika was 86. Mugabe is 85.

Quite scary isn’t it?