Association with Chivhayo warrants impeachment from Presidency
GOOD day, President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
GOOD day, President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Your Excellency, as I see it, the scriptural rhetorical question, “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” (Amos 3:3) underscores the impeachable misdemeanour of your depraved association with convicted fraudster and tenderpreneur Wicknell Chivayo.
Essentially, the question suggests that two people must be in agreement, sharing mutual purposes. Otherwise, they cannot walk and talk together, journeying in a meaningful and supportive manner without commonality.
Chivayo enjoys unfettered proximity to you. He is the envy of many, including Zanu PF cadres. Apparently, you share with him the mutuality of the camaraderie spirit, despite his criminal conviction.
Consequently, methinks his association with you warrants impeachment from the Presidency, given that two people cannot walk and talk together unless they are agreed.
His corrupted execution of the multi-million-dollar Gwanda solar generation project and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) tender hardly nibbles your conscience, so is a US$1 million donation to the Zion Christian Church.
His flying with you in your aircraft and hanging around you at your farm point to mutuality.
Your Excellency, the response to an audio recording widely suspected to be of Chivayo by my fellow communication practitioners in your offices fell a million miles short of the intuition befitting the highest office in the land.
They lacked the constancy of Prophet Nathan who pronounced the guilty verdict on King David.
It is agreeable that the audio recording brought disrepute to the Presidency and the first secretary of Zanu PF.
Yet, it was erroneous for my brethren in the communication profession to apportion the blame and wrongful resultant consequences on Chivayo.
I reckon the responsibility of safeguarding the integrity of the Presidency rests with you, the incumbent. It is your uppermost key result area to be attentive to the strict adherence to sobriety and decorum.
Darned association with Chivayo is a misdemeanour that warrants impeachment from the Presidency.
Truly, associations vitiated by corruption were unheard of during the tenure of the deposed late former President Robert Mugabe.
Despite his manifold dictatorial tendencies, Mugabe was a judicious custodian of the eminence of the Presidency.
It is reprehensible that you practically embody the adage, when a clown occupies the palace, it becomes a circus.
Yet, it is your mandate to preserve the dignity of the Presidency, not Chivayo as presumed by my fellow communicators.
Responding to the utterance alleged to have been made by Chivayo that he was in your circle, Zanu PF director for information, Farai Marapira retorted that the ruling party would soon put an end to the antics of Chivayo.
Yet, you welcome him to be around you and visiting dignitaries.
“Our President is incapable of being captured. His history is too illustrious to be reduced by any supposed tomfoolery or overzealousness. We definitely will not allow that. We will not tolerate it and stand by,” declared Marapira.
Marapira could end up with egg on his face.
Given that the source of funding for the lump sum handouts you lavished the Cabinet, deputy ministers, legislators and High Court judges and the villa in Equatorial Guinea are yet to be revealed, he risks being haunted by his statement.
If ever there could be a heroic patriotic service that you could render that would salvage your reputation, it would be to relinquish the Presidency forthwith.
Methinks you have the moral obligation to voluntarily step down.
Your Excellency, you owe it to yourself, then to citizenry at large and to posterity to relinquish the Presidency.
Considering the discernment, integrity and sobriety expected of the Presidency, association with Chivayo warrants impeachment.
As if your storming to power courtesy of a military coup in 2017 was not sufficiently untoward to democratic tenets, the two consecutive inconclusive harmonised elections cast your Presidency forlornly outside of the rank of duly accountable leadership.
It warrants some detailed scholarly studies on how your power grab survived the punitive censure ordinarily meted out to successions that violate time-honoured principles democracy.
Furthermore, you had the audacity to unleash the men in boots twice on citizenry.
Added to that, throughout your tenure, you never purposely endeavoured to accommodate the progressive alternative voice of reason on all facets of democracy and accountable governance.
Contrarily, you regard civil society as enemies of the State.
Your Excellency, contrary to your engagement and re-engagement call, Zimbabwe was conspicuous by her absence at a recent two-day meeting of defence chiefs drawn from 32 African nations United States Africa Command (Africom) meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, recently.
From where I stand, you have the moral obligation to step down. If Zanu PF was a full-fledged revolutionary party as oftentimes claimed, it would be imperative for it to demonstrate its sincerity by instituting impeachment proceedings against you.
As the oftentimes recited words of William Shakespeare, “All the world is a stage and all men and women are merely players, they have their exits and their entries,” association with Chivayo irretrievably thrust you at the exit of your Presidency.
I reckon the Old Testament scripture passage, an old King who grew worse and worse and became increasingly rebellious and disobedient as he grew older (1 Samael 15 :23) does not bear semblance with your likely rulership intransigence, given the ED 2030 sloganeering.
I duly subscribe to the democratic principle that the first secretary, president and prime minister are designations that denote to all intents and purposes, a first among equals.
These titles entail the burden of leading equals with a profound sense of collective responsibility.
Forsooth, your association with Chivayo arouses intense aversion. It is my conviction that the precedent of recalling presidents that was set by your fellow revolutionary party, the African National Council of South Africa will be a compelling option should you dither to step down.
Your Excellency, if you ask me, association with Chivayo is fundamentally indecorous. It fittingly warrants your impeachment.
Cyprian Muketiwa Ndawana is a public-speaking coach, motivational speaker, speechwriter and newspaper columnist.