I WAS shocked a couple of days ago when I read in the Press that Gorden Moyo the provincial chairman of the MDC-T and Member of Parliament for Makokoba constituency held a victory dinner party for the province’s top brass of his party in his house in Famona suburb, Bulawayo.
-Cont Mhlanga
I have no problem with him holding a celebration party for sweeping clean the parliamentary and council seats in the Bulawayo Province, but I have serious reservations with his choice of venue.
His house for hosting top brass of his party in the province . . . haah, my foot!
This reveals so much about his character, political ambitions and understanding of the role of politics in society.
It is also a pointer to one of various reasons why his team lost the Zimbabwean vote dismally to Zanu PF in the last election.
Moyo is a provincial MDC-T chairman who won resoundingly in Makokoba against two-time looser Tshinga Dube and six other candidates.
To give honour to the Makokoba voters who showed confidence in him and his party, he should have found a venue within his constituency to grab the opportunity to bring his big party wigs and the media to his constituency and use the opportunity to tell the city residents how they would now roll out the party’s election manifesto in the constituency and the rest of the city and not the make silly statements about the world knowing that MDC-T defended democracy in Bulawayo.
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Whose world? Will the world know that his party defended democracy in Bulawayo and put food on the table for the people of Bulawayo?
Moyo should have selected even a school, church, youth club, opportunistic infections clinic for children at Mpilo for those children affected or infected with HIV and Aids, old people’s home and later make some donations to the venue.
From there he would have led his top brass guests to tour the Makokoba market and persuade them to buy something from the market to support the traders there and leave some money in the economy of his constituency.
But he found no reason to associate his party’s victory with what deep down he views as those dirty low-class suburbs inhabited by worthless people who can’t afford to stay in leafy suburbs like his home in Famona.
His high party leadership who have been to State House and dined with President Robert Mugabe, cannot be taken to a venue in Makokoba as that would not befit the upper-class status that they deserve.
The suburbs of Thorngrove, Burombo, Nguboyenja, Ntabazinduna, Sotshangane, Mhlophe, Mzilikazi, Thokozani, Mbuyazwe, Barbourfields, Makokoba and its several flats make up the Makokoba constituency and Moyo and his MDC-T top brass could not find a space in any one of them and turn it in to a “class” venue for the occasion!
The MDC-T leadership did not even cause the establishment and construction of the suburb of Famona, so why do they think it is special for top brass of the party to celebrate Moyo’s victory there than in Makokoba?
His house, not even a hotel or some small lodge with a nice well-kept garden, could not be given business by the MDC-T leadership of the province.
Tell the people Moyo if you gave the catering business to any of the Makokoba women’s clubs or a Makokoba-based entertainment group to empower them?
This is the most arrogant, insulting and degrading decision slighting the people of Makokoba particularly, those that voted for MDC-T.
You have made them look like mental lunatics who don’t even deserve to be admitted in any psychiatric hospital.
Where am I coming from with this political analysis?
If anyone makes an event and invites the media and makes public pronouncements about their organisation and allows the media to run the story to the general public, it ceases to be a private event in a private residency.
It is for this reason that Mugabe’s dinners held at his residency become events of public interest when he allows the media to attend.
Now, because Moyo is chairman of the Bulawayo Province, he is turning his house into an MDC-T provincial State house in an effort to self-gratifiy to be like Mugabe.
I find this is very disrespectful for the people of Makokoba and the MDC-T family in general.
I don’t understand how a mere provincial party chairman, not even a party national chairman, invites the party’s vice-president Thokozani Khupe to his private residence, invites the media and pronounces far-reaching party statements from his bedroom window before the VP of the party.
How does Moyo understand the meaning of the words party discipline, protocol and respect? Wehlulekile ukuhlonipha abantu mfokamdala (You failed to respect the people Moyo).
I now see a Moyo concerned and focused on building political and money power at all costs and does not give a hoot about creating survival opportunities to change people’s lives for the better in his constituency.
As an old useless man ukhulu nje, my aim is not to decampaign Moyo in his constituency where I grew up and worked all my life, but to give him my honest opinion if he intends to win the Makokoba seat again in 2018 and eventually get the political and money power that he seems to be desperately after.
Insulting people’s intelligence this way — going to Makokoba to collect votes then going and dining with his friends in his house, will not take him and his party anywhere — particularly now that his party faces a new revived merciless Zanu PF whose agenda is to revive, clean and reconstruct Mugabe’s revolutionary legacy ahead of any other African leaders in this century to the status of Mao Tse Tung of China.
This is no time for mistakes and blunders such as these from the leadership of MDC-T at any level at any time.
Let me say this reflects badly on Moyo for several reasons that I will not go into because in my village traditions we say. . . iqaqa kalihlinzelwa ebandla (Never skin a polecat in public), but for this one I will have to say it since I now hear increased calls for MDC-T to change leadership and demote their president.
We all saw how Moyo rose in politics in the MDC-T financed by the world through Bulawayo Agenda.
Is this the world that now drives him to hastily throw a dinner in his house, of all places, in an effort to vindicate himself to that world he worked hard to represent its interest in Zimbabwe by winning the Bulawayo province so that the said world could continue to reward him?
We all saw how his party president from the blue — away from party structures — rewarded him with a high post in Cabinet in the inclusive government confirming to all that Moyo all along was one of, if not the main political advisor to his president Morgan Tsvangirai behind the scenes.
The inclusive government was the time to reward and position him for total power in the MDC-T.
Now, considering and analysing Moyo’s first move after the elections after winning Bulawayo Province for the MDC-T, it is a move that blends well with how his party stopped prioritising and connecting with the people once they were given temporary access to the State house for tea with Mugabe.
Any fool can tell that Moyo played a major role in his president’s several costly blunders, pitfalls and his party performing dismally in the past election.
His action through selection of venue points to a very weak link of Tswangirai and his constituency.
A provincial chairperson is a very important post and link in a political party.
Given what Moyo just did, may confirm to all that Tswangirai may not be the weak one in his top leadership after all, but a lot of other such arrogant power hungry childish characters within the MDC-T who fail to put people first in their political agenda, could be the major culprits.
If Moyo has his genial reasons for snubbing the people of Makokoba after harvesting votes from them only to share the spoils with the upper class in a posh suburb, then he had better find a platform to explain his reasons to his constituency before it is too late.
I have no words to express what I think about why Khupe, a senior party leader in the region, failed to warn Moyo on this disgusting move when she got an invitation from him.
MaKhupe yini inkinga mas’geh? (What’s your problem Khupe?). Or could I be the mad one? If that be the case then it would be best to be the mad one.
If you think I am crazy — because Famona is in Bulawayo anywhere — then take a leaf from Andrew Langa the Zanu PF chairman for Matabeleland South Province.
To celebrate total victory for his party in the province, he placed the event where the common people are — in Insiza district — and not in some flashy house of his own in a posh Gwanda suburb inviting only the top brass of his party.
The MCD-T young generation have a lot to learn in Zimbabwean politics.
It will be an experience worth waiting for to witness how the people of Makokoba would sing and toyitoyi alongside Moyo when he visits them in the next weeks to come after snubbing them and insulting them with his first victory dinner event!
Rod Stewart once reminded his fans that the first cut is the deepest.
The next years ahead of us will be the most exiting politically since independence in 1980.
By the look of things, Zimbabweans should pray for MDC-T leadership to redefine their purpose in the current Zimbabwean politics.
Moyo is lost and I suggest that he reads two books, Robin Wood and Marco Polo and learn the power of connecting with the common people from the book’s main characters if one wants to create social change in their life time.
