As the tussle for power goes on despite strident official denials from those involved, this week Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks) reported the discovery of some lion carcasses in the Hwange National Park that had their heads and feet cut off.
Muckraker believes that until the criminals are brought to book, everyone in this country remains a suspect, although there are certainly others who are more suspicious than others.
There is a belief among Egyptians that a lion’s head and paws are useful for the mystical purposes of safeguarding the throne. There are just too many people around whose thrones are not very secure who — at any given chance — would certainly not miss the opportunity to give this superstition a try.
And who has not heard that lion fat is a vital ingredient in face ointments for those who may have good reasons or excuses to want to be feared? As a country, we certainly have an oversupply of those requiring this charm.
In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), lion (or tiger) bone wine is taken by wealthy consumers who believe it not just to be “wonder-full” for such ailments as arthritis and rheumatism, but also for boasting flagging sex drives. We certainly also have an oversupply of aged and sick (including those with erectile dysfunction) but wealthy individuals who have no valid excuse to resist the temptation to try these concoctions. Aren’t these some of the low-hanging fruits of the Look East policy?
Meanwhile, during the giga-deception that was passed off as a war of liberation in this country, the terrorists had a cheeky habit of hanging a dead animal on pole at a homestead of their next victim as a warning to them to stop whatever mischief they were suspected of engaging in.
Muck is not saying anything, lest he be accused of trying to cause alarm and despondency, but the decapitating of lions could be portentous for those that go around strutting as lions (Shumba), a warning that something disastrous could be awaiting them if they don’t quit the mischief that they are being accused of.
Certainly, these now dead lions once used to be fearsome and (seemingly) invincible, but they could not survive forever, but also certainly no one is plotting to decapitate our own Shumba Murambwi (the rejected lion!) and (seemingly) perennial survivor!
Anyway, who is Muck to try and play a Joseph or Daniel to interpret foolish mysteries?
A-looter continua!
The vampiric ruling party’s conference has started in Bulawayo where the people are obviously going to endorse the obvious: that because our Owner is the best there ever can be in this country, the constitution should be desecrated for the good of the country so that the people can continue enjoying the very best of our Owner — hospitals without drugs, joblessness, runaway inflation, corruption on steroids and anything and everything that should never happen to a country.
Muck knows a cult when he sees one. The reeling party is certainly one. When they are fighting as they are doing right now, it is never about the good of the country, but about who gets to head the cult and outdo the predecessor in inflicting more pain on the people. That is their own measure of success — now the majority groan.
A real case of necro-political rule that is only comparable to that which exists in occupied Palestine, Kashmir, Somaliland or Angola’s Cabinda where the success of the occupation forces is measured in the levels of suffering they can inflict. So much about being liberated! A-looter continua!
Busy season of rigging
It is proving to be a really very busy season for the Sadc-PF election rigging machinery that is strategically based in Harare. After doing a perfect job in Mozambique, where tens of thousands of foreigners, including undercover foreign journalists, effortlessly voted, the machinery is now ready for more work in Botswana where Cde Mokgweetsi Masisi has already won the October 30, before winding up in Namibia where Swapo candidate Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has already won the November 27 poll!
We are already bankrolling the PF of Zambia to ensure that Cde Edgar Lungu returns to his rightful place in the 2026 election.
That is how good we are as the Sadc-PF rigging centre. We make election results certain before even one ballot has been cast.
Before the official results were announced in Mozambique, we had already congratulated Cde Daniel Chapo and his Frelimo for their victory … never mind the violent protests that have rocked many Mozambican cities and towns in the past week over these elections.
These are occupational hazards that we are now so used to. On these shores, we have jailed — and even killed — more protestors with nothing ever happening to us.
We are even unfazed by the protests that would be taking place at the Zimbabwe embassy in Gaborone over the weekend which are organised by losing Botswana opposition parties, the Umbrella for Democratic Change and the Botswana Congress Party, the parties that have already lost to Cde Masisi.
The beauty of it all is that all the losers may want to appeal to Sadc and being Sadc ourselves, it would be like a goat seeking justice in a court of hyenas. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Sorry Cde, but …Muckraker is very sorry to Defence Deputy minister Cde Levi Mayihlome who, we are told, lost a cool US$850 to tricksters that hit him after the ex-soldier summoned what could be left of his bravery to try his luck in an online get-rich-quick scam.
Whoever said a fool and his money are soon parted? If it were Muck, he would have stretched the dregs of his bravery as far as never letting anyone know that he had been a victim of his own foolishness.
Muck was just thinking to himself: if sheer greed can lead these people to gamble with their own money in the hope of getting richer, how much can they be trusted with the much more that is not theirs, which they are supposed to keep on our behalf?
Summer of book reading
Muck is very much looking forward to reading the books by two former security goons — Happyton Bonyongwe and Itai Mukandi — that were put on the market recently.
Both Bonyongwe’s autobiography, One Among Many: My Contribution to the Zimbabwe Story and Mukandi’s own autobiography strangely titled How Mnangagwa Blindsided Robert Mugabe and Grabbed Zimbabwe, can be useful to those who are able to connect the dots.
Whatever makes Bongongwe’s book cost a princely US$80 baffles the mind, but what Muck knows for sure is that the book carries nothing that Zimbos would want to know: stuff like the fate of Itai Dzamara, the exact margin by which Robert Mugabe lost to Morgan Tsvangirai in the March 2008 election, the number of people that died during the coup that toppled Mugabe, who got what from the DRC excursion and the true circumstances around the good riddance deaths of the country’s military elites.
Of course, Muck is not expecting to find these in the book, for obvious reasons. A book without the above information is only worth reading to pick the glaring omissions and some inconsistences, not useful for anything else — and certainly not for that price.
Mukandi, is based in Canada, having fled the country in the aftermath of his dismissal from his plum deputy CIO director-general’s post after a scandal involving safe house funds. We hope that in addition to telling us what he thinks we don’t already know about the Owner, he also explained this scandal in detail … and much more.