Of baboons and voters

The danger of allowing people to stay in power too long is that they start taking people for granted. This was amply demonstrated by vice- President Simon Muzenda at Chivi when he told a rally there that even if the ruling party fielded a baboon as a party candidate people should vote for it.

“Even if we put a baboon in Chivi, if you are ZANU-PF you vote for that baboon,” he was quoted as saying.

Honestly, are Zimbabwean voters, or ZANU-PF supporters, expected to be that daft, to be so blindly loyal? Yes, it might have worked in 1980, or perhaps under the proportional representation system, but not in the first-past-the-post system.

And what was the point of bragging that he is the vice-President of the country? Who does not know that?

“I am called Mzee, the vice president of this country when President Mugabe is not there I run the country, and if I sign your death warrant you will hang,” he was quoted as saying.

Was this not a threat to his opponents not just in the opposition but in ZANU-PF itself, that if he says go, “do not oppose me”, you should not?

After all, Masvingo has had a history of factionalism?

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