Oneword

Today's blog could have had many titles.

During the week I was thinking of “The proper study of Mankind is Man”.

That was after I had watched Idi Amin on our pay channel last Sunday – this time with (mentally) pen and paper at the ready to immediately ink all the impressions left on me by this enigma of a man who could display the equanimity of a Nelson Mandela in one second, fly into a Desmond Tutu impotent rage the next and display the inhuman cruelty - sheathed in a toothy smile and downplayed by the pukka British accent - of a Robert Mugabe the very next.

At the last bit I thought that I would rather call it ”For fools rush in where angels fear to tread". That did not please me either, because the last-named is anything but a fool. He snarls, is snooty, smooth, oily, and dangerous, but never, never a fool.

He plays his role to perfection – probably practising all the gestures like a Hitler in front of a mirror to get them exactly right – stroking the cheek of a school child with apparent bonhomie, while all the time plotting the next iniquity to be inflicted on the apparent opponents in the election at the end of this month (29 March 2008).

When his Green Bombers rage on, maybe they should also remember that “there never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent”

This March farce – from which the great-great-granddad of African politics will re-emerge the victor as from a veritable fountain of youth to continue to haunt the hapless citizens of his domain with a Thomáz Torquemada-like pedantry – will continue to reverberate through the guilty conscience of the blinkered for many years to come.

SADC seems to be besotted with him like a virginal bride with the husband of her dreams - that rather sooner than later will turn into nightmares.

They see the portents of doom - MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN – but pretend to see not the El Diablo - only what they perceive as El Dorado. They imitate the 3 monkeys – or should that be 14 monkeys with all the things they don't see?

By this time I was quite convinced that my epistle should be entitled "To err is human, to forgive, divine".

After all, anybody can make a mistake!

And he has not really repeated the same mistake over and over again for last century or two (or so it may seem to most Zimbabweans), but has achieved the impossible of lowering the bar each year a bit more.

People like the professors and the doctor should know, by now, that "a little yearning is a dang'rous thing".

It is only in fairy tales and bad jokes that a mouse bests an elephant!

It is already as certain as the Titanic hitting an iceberg that the regional body will call any election-like parody “free and fair”.

So why bother?

Go to State House in Harare or his house - no, not the house in Old Highfield – his sumptuous R80+ million mansion in Borrowdale Brook Road in Helensvale - unlock the safe and take out the results.

At least some of the worthless paper called money across the river will be saved.


But, who knows? It was said in ancient times that the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. In one of the Holy Books that is repeated as “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

So maybe, after all this I should remember that "Hope springs eternal in the human breast". Maybe Justice is not as blind as SADC's Miranda.

Anything is possible!