After reading the latest Radar column in the Herald of 16 April 2016, I really felt sorry for its writer, one George Charamba. If there is one thing that George Charamba should know, it is that God, not Zanu-PF or its god President Robert Mugabe, “blesses his people with peace” (Psalm 29:11).
By Jealousy Mawarire
Some of us who have known God and accepted Jesus Christ in our lives have no need to worry, for we know that true happiness is found in the Lord our God. He has blessed us with real peace. The sooner Charamba, whether in his form as Radar or in his Nathaniel Manheru effigy, knows this, the better for his body and soul.
The Bible tells us to “trust in the Lord, not in chariots and horses” (Psalm 20:7) because the Lord God is the source of peace. On the contrary, those that trust in chariots and horses, those that trust in His Excellency, Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces and lay their lives for his continued misrule will forever not know any peace for peace is not found through bootlicking mere mortals but through trust in the Lord our God.
They can never walk the streets of Harare without worrying about public reprisals. They cannot spend the money they loot in peace because they know it is stolen. They can always build houses but will never sleep in them peacefully, and others, as the Bible tells us, “shall betroth a wife and another man shall lie with her” (Deuteronomy 28:30).
It is, therefore, preposterous and equally hypocritical, for these troubled people like Radar Charamba, to then look at some of us and think we are not at peace. I liken that behaviour to a situation where a Ngomahuru or Engutsheni inmate thinks his benefactor, the one who would have come to make donations to the institution, is actually more mentally deranged than him.
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Is it not ironic that people like us who, under the auspices of Zim PF and under the leadership of Dr Joice Mujuru, are fighting for the freedom of those that are in bondage, like Radar Charamba, can be mistaken for being troubled?
We might not be as rich as the looters of our national coffers like Radar Charamba and his PSMAS partners in crime, but we are certainly managing by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ who has always been our provider and in whose bosom we find our being and happiness.
Those who are accused of looting national assets, state medical aid societies, are the ones who should be troubled. I suppose that it is really traumatic for the same looters when they fail to repatriate the loot that they stashed in foreign banks back to Zimbabwe because the US anti-money laundering and Organisation of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) guidelines are making it almost impossible.
I understand that it is very traumatic as well, when one cannot afford to fall ill inside their own country because they know that if they fall sick here, there is no proper medical care because the money that was supposed to fund their medical bill, and the bills of thousands pensioners including war veterans, was looted by none other than them. Consequently they have to fall sick when they go outside the country on national business because, under those circumstances, they can use national resources, contingency budgets that most of those on Mugabe’s foreign entourage often loot.
It is a fact, Radar Charamba, that the ones who have no peace are those that are employed to defend a crumbling regime, to defend and come up with spins for a boss cum god who falls in public and sleeps on duty with astonishing frequency. Those whose job is to pretend that their boss is as fit as a Mallee bull and mentally as sound as a 28 year-old yet he reads stale speeches at the opening of parliament are the real troubled souls among us.
Equally, those employed to convince all and sundry that there are no factions in Zanu-PF when everyone who cares to know is fully aware that Zanu-PF is now a crumbling façade with nothing except yawning emptiness behind it are those that run the risk of mental derangement.
It is a fact that being employed to lie that civil servants are going to get their bonuses when the national coffers are as dry and empty as a Zanu-PF manifesto can make one lose their peace.
The several state media journalists suffering from cognitive dissonance as a result of being forced to write lies when they know the real truth are the ones who are troubled. One only need to ask people like Webster Shamu to understand how traumatic it is for journalists to be forced to write lies about situations they know the truth about, situations that are part of their lived realities.
Those that work in the ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services and suffering from post-traumatic disorders as a result of years of abuse by a departed former state president are the ones that we should pray for.
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Such characters, now suffering from post-traumatic disorders as a result of violent vacillations between being a Mr and a Mrs, are the ones that we should really feel pity for. They are the ones that know no peace and should therefore come to God and repent of their sins and then join Zimbabwe People First and fight for their freedom and the emancipation of their children’s children.
However, it is normally the case that victims are never aware of the oppression that has become part of their lives. Even during the war of liberation, some oppressed young blacks became collaborators with the Smith regime (Vatengesi) while others did it under Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s army (Madzakutsaku).
It is now the same with people like Radar Charamba who fights everyone whom he thinks might upset his applecart. Anyone who challenges the corrupt, brutal, oppressive and directionless Zanu-PF government quickly courts the ire of Charamba and he takes the challenge personally, most probably to make up for his past errors of commission when he did not join the liberation struggle and chose to be on the other side when patriots and nationalists of the time chose to leave the country and prosecute the war of liberation under the auspices of Zipra and Zanla.
It is typical Charamba style to metamorphose into one columnist or the other when he seeks to attack his perceived enemies. In 2009 when I, and a group of 3 other journalists approached the courts against a decision to bar us from covering the Comesa summit in Victoria Falls, Charamba, masquerading as a “Special Correspondent” chose to abuse his position at the Ministry of Information by writing in the Herald all sorts of lies about me and the other journalists with whom I made the court application. He has continued to do that over the years under different guises ranging from Nathaniel Manheru to Correspondent, sometimes special or just plain correspondent.
Charamba can approach any court of law that he wants over my disclosure that he writes as Radar or any such titles. After all, the coffers at PSMAS have dried up and he surely has to look for alternative sources of money to fund his lavish lifestyle and its attendant debauchery.
He can claim any defamation amount that he can imagine, but in equal measure he should stop abusing Zimbabweans by his cowardice manifesting in ghost columns in the state media. Those that live in glass houses stay away from the habit of throwing stones.
Let me also tell Charamba that if there is anything that I will not apologise for, to him and his ilk, is that I am a Rhodes Scholar because it is not criminal. Why is it that George has a problem with anyone younger than him who would have gone to school? Last time it was Dr Pedzisai Ruhanya and Tonderai Shonhe. Their crime, according to the esoterically erudite Charamba, was that the two were reading for their PhDs. Real PhDs not those that are as fake and useless as the meet-the-people rallies by Grace Mugabe.
It is a fact that Charamba suffers from an illusory superiority whence he thinks because of his proximity to President Mugabe and the security sector he is untouchable. He also thinks because of his unfettered access to the state media which give him space to write columns like Radar and On the Other Side by Nathaniel Manheru, he can abuse people with impunity.
Charamba should know that with advances in the area of technology, we no longer cry and beg for a right of reply in his Herald whenever he attacks us, but can also throw brickbats to him in equal measure through the use of alternative media.
This time we are prepared to take the battle, even to penalty shoot-outs. Pakaipa, pakaipisisa!
This article was first published on Jealousy Mawarire’s blog: www.mawarirespeaks.wordpress.com
