Mugabe Taking His Morning-After Pills

MUGABE TAKING HIS MORNING-AFTER PILLS

I do not have any intimate knowledge about unnatural contraception. I am Catholic and so we do not plan our children. I always marvel at those who claim to. I cannot imagine sitting down with my wife, with an Agenda for the day’s meeting, a minute taker and the resolutions book. There is certainly a good reason in nature why most animals cannot breed in captivity. Catholics have their point, but do not ask me why I still have two children.

Many women will tell you that if they engage in an activity that may result in them falling pregnant against their will, they rush to the nearest pharmacy presumably on the next morning and purchase the wonder pills named the morning-after. The pills are designed to prevent breams and tiger fish in the Zambezi River’s upstream flow from finding a hospitable valley of fertility. For the medicine to gather and put back the bolting donkeys in the stable, it must be taken within 72 hours of the activity. The pharmacist is ethically required to give some counselling before dispensing them. The woman must be told that this is not a regular contraceptive. Put in another way, it is an “emergency kick-out panel”. The Pope and others consider this murder still.

If you do not take it within the required period, you risk giving birth to a baby or more with clenched fists and a naughty smile. When you undo the clenches, you may find the progeny holding the belated morning-after pills. Like election results posted outside polling stations!

The tragic-comedy that engulfs the Presidential results shows that Mugabe has decided to take his morning-after pills long after the 72 hour period. How else do you explain fraud charges against Binga ZEC officers? Some of the charges according to the state-owned Herald of the 16th April, 2008, allege that they recorded Tsvangirai as having 16 492 votes instead of 16 493, a difference of one vote! It is alleged that they recorded the Zanu PF’s candidate as having 2 794 votes instead of 2 798, a difference of 4 votes. In another instance it is alleged that they gave Langton Towungana, a presidential candidate, 107 votes instead of 111? Can anyone seriously prove any criminal intent to defraud? What happened to innocent counting errors? I thought the law has a rule expressed in Latin as, de minimis non curat lex? This means that the law does not concern itself with trivialities.

What will the morning-after pills achieve now? Mugabe either has to abort the foetus or give birth to an unwanted baby. A rerun will not reverse all the risks that unprotected polling brings. Even a ten thousand generals with freshly imported Chinese ammunition, a supine state press, a marauding militia, comical spokespersons, a lame-duck South African President, designer clothes and 400 motor vehicles driven by medical doctors will not help. A fatal disease may have been contracted.

Liberation movements have shown consistently that they cannot easily change from the autocratic military movements to democratic parties demanded of modern governments. This is why I prophesy that whatever happens, Zanu PF has contracted a disease that will claim its life. Kenneth Kaunda’s UNIP has virtually disappeared in Zambia. It has about 2 seats in the current Parliament. Kaunda will outlive it. Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi Congress Party is dying in Malawi. Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi’s KANU is dying in Kenya.

Chama Chama Pinduzi of Tanzania has survived because it has managed to change. When Julius Nyerere threw in the towel on his own terms, Ali Hassan Mwinyi took up the mantle, followed by Benjamin Mkapa and now Julius Kikwete. In Mozambique, they are on their second President since the death of Samora Machel in 1986. On Seretse Khama’s death, Siketumile Masire took over in Botswana. He was succeeded by Festus Mogae. Mogae has just stepped down one and half years before the end of his second term, to allow Iain Khama the chance to prove that he can lead the Tswana.

Zanu PF has no succession plan. Like an old fractured horse, it may need to be put down. Rumours abound amongst its zealots indicate that they want a rerun after taking some contraception. They may dispense with the need for morning-after pills this time. It is said that after some 18 months, someone will take over from Mugabe.
However, they may have already contracted the fatal disease. Like its sister change-resistant liberation movements across the continent, Zanu PF detests democracy, the intelligent and the young. The next crop of “leaders” by age is Bright Matonga, Patrick Zhuwawo and Saviour Kasukuwere. They make me laugh. Not-so-Bright Matonga makes people who watch him on international television news channels laugh at me as a Zimbabwean.

When rumours of alternative candidates to Mugabe were spreading last year, Oppah Zvipange Charm Muchinguri, the Zanu PF’s Women’s League leader, threatened to strip naked if anyone dares challenge Mugabe. She was walloped in the parliamentary elections on March 29. Makoni’s late challenge cost us a strip show. His upmarket Harare underwear business would have benefited from this enterprise. And people say he has business acumen! You would have thought Muchinguri, who witnessed the death of the legendary Josiah Tongogara had learnt some principle. No, it’s all profanity.

In order to defeat the fatal disease, anti-retrovirals may have to be taken by Zanu PF. But with its tendency to postpone bitter medicines, they may be given too late to the patient. By the time Gono buys the foreign currency at Harare’s 4th Street mobile alternative exchange bureaus necessary to import the anti-retrovirals, they may indeed be more dangerous to the body than remedial.

As the dead cockerel Party walks up the banks of the mythical River Styx on its way to Judgment, it may be faced with the true revolutionaries who once doubted Mugabe’s leadership waiting to ask a few questions? “Jonathan who?” “Gideon who?”

Why did we reduce this “glorious revolution to a feudal agrarian enterprise?” “Is this what we fought for?”

Someone will have a sobering thought and say, “Firstly, he should not have polled. And the morning-after pills came too late”. A High Court judge will say it was not an urgent matter.

Any girl will tell you, you do not need morning-after pills if you have behaved responsibly. As the late musician Paul “Dr Love” Matavire put it, majichimbo-chimbo anofara musi wafa kondo ziso! Prey celebrates the demise of its predator.

Happy Independence Day!


Tererai Mafukidze is a Zimbabwean lawyer based in Johannesburg. He can be contacted on tereraim@gmail.com.