Bennet not alone in feeling like hitting things
THERE must be many Zimbabweans today whose frustration with Zanu PF
policies boils over into violence.
Some take it out on their wives, their children, other relatives or
even total strangers in supermarkets or at football matches.
People, in general, are on tenterhooks every day: the struggle to
survive on a salary totally unrelated to the cost of living can turn a
person with the disposition of a pussycat into a raging Bengali tiger.
Zanu PF’s inflammatory language against all its perceived enemies has
also transformed many men and women from law-abiding citizens into
foul-mouthed antisocial pariahs.
People who would normally have defended their country to the hilt in
foreign countries now hesitate to have strangers identify them as
Zimbabweans.
Even if they do, they will try to isolate themselves from what the
government is doing or has done. In brief, more people are prepared to speak
ill of their government today than at independence.
Roy Bennet’s mistake was to let his anger boil over in Parliament. But
the language Patrick Chinamasa used before he was pummelled by the furious
Chimanimani MP was personal and extremely provocative.
Some people said they detected a racist element in Chinamasa’s taunt.
Others wonder how Bennet might have reacted if Chinamasa had been less
inflammatory in his speech.
This is probably all water under the bridge, but there are lessons for
us all here. Whenever political rivalry degenerates into fisticuffs, there
is no telling where it will end.
Zanu PF, as a party, can be said to have authored the original
handbook on political violence in Zimbabwe. The party has virtually bashed
its way to victory in every election.
Since 2000, there has been a racist element to Zanu PF’s political
rhetoric. The party’s defeat in the constitutional referendum and its loss
of 57 seats to the MDC – four of them to white candidates – heightened its
racist interpretation of every setback it has suffered since then.
There seems to be no end in sight to Zanu PF’s Western-bashing,
although this week’s meeting between the new British ambassador and a
Cabinet Minister could herald an accommodation of sorts.
But there could be a new target for the bashing – the South African
government. Cosatu’s ill-fated visit to Harare could be transformed into an
attempt by President Thabo Mbeki’s government to use a proxy to arm-twist
President Robert Mugabe into giving Morgan Tsvangirai and the
MDC a fair political deal.
If Zanu PF decides it has nothing to lose by remaining stubbornly
resolute in telling everybody to “go to hell”, more and more people in
Zimbabwe could end up letting off steam by bashing something…or someone.