If I was to stand as a candidate . . .

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SOME mothers do have them, sons I mean. Recently I was taken down memory lane to my boarding school days.

SOME mothers do have them, sons I mean. Recently I was taken down memory lane to my boarding school days.

The Last Straw with Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga

It was a hilarious tale of this creative and enterprising son who on his first day emptied his trunk full of clothes, filled it with soil and tendered a thriving crop of mbanje.

The story does not end there. He and some colleagues would then climb into the dormitory ceiling and smoke the prime crop. It is not my place to describe the effects that the narcotic had on their thinking faculties. But they would not have been discovered if it weren’t for the fire that broke out and nearly burnt down the whole school. He was expelled, of course, not for committing such a heinous crime, but because he and his sidekicks got caught!

What has this story got to do with anything? On the surface, nothing really, but on deeper analysis it shows just how creative human beings can be even for the wrong reasons. Which brings me to political candidates aspiring or more accurately, perspiring for office. I am of the opinion that in nine out of 10 cases, they run for the wrong reasons, and deliberately so.

If I was given the chance, and I said only “if”, I would start by being honest. Simple! People adore those who are open about themselves and their intentions. If your intention is to make money, then come out in the open and say so. Then perhaps the electorate would give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that some of the loot that you intend to accumulate while in office would be allowed to trickle down to them.

Then the other thing to do is to build a good profile. Some call it branding or rebranding, if you have your fair share of skeletons.

Be sure to embark on a thorough spring-cleaning exercise. It is essential to do this before the election because skeletons have the knack of tumbling out of the cupboard when least expected to do so.

Especially when there are newspapers whose claim to fame is to catch those skeletons, spruce them up, make them stand up-right and display them for all and sundry to gawk at.

Reputations are made and are thus easily undone. It would be proper and advisable that when a candidate creates a fictitious profile which includes a manufactured past and educational background, hire credible references who will be there to back up your story when push comes to shove.

This is a very expensive exercise since they would demand to be on a retainer for the duration of the office you would have been elected into.

For a highly educated nation like Zimbabwe, you could find that we have learned our lesson for having voted into office people who cannot tell the difference between advocacy and dozing in office where it matters most, our current crop of councillors being a case in point. No matter how much they try to sanitise themselves, the fact remains that if they don’t own property (and here we don’t classify a bicycle as property) they do not have enough gumption even to lead a burial society.

In any case, what really matters is how I package myself as a candidate worth voting for. Am I going to be a “people person” identifying with the down- trodden without necessarily patronising them?

I should be able to identify with the emotive aspects of my constituents. Do I inspire and galvanise action? Am I able to engage and give them a sense of trust in my intentions (which is to get rich fast), earn my respect and engender hope in them sharing my newly-found status.

As a candidate I could realise the fact that political battles are fought and won (and lost) at a local level and this is dominated by the youth, as current demographics will show.

If any political party worth its salt has not realised this, then they can kiss any chance of success goodbye. What is it that resonates more to the youth than a youthful candidate? Here we don’t mean a candidate that is young at heart.

In my short life I have realised that it’s a big mistake to take the youth for granted.

Apart from that fact that they are likely to be your pall-bearers when you kiss this cruel world goodbye, they are the ones who are likely to take over whether you like it or not. So a candidate or party that has vision should intelligently rope in the youth, not to do their dirty work, but to articulate the ideals that they hope to use to cruise to victory.

For all that its worth, I will not stand for any office because quite honestly, I do not qualify. Otherwise I would have to lie through my teeth about my true intentions.

l Lenox Mhlanga is a social commentator