Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Takunda Maodza
10 November 2009
opinion
Harare — IT IS wise to keep one's mouth closed at times. Elders say, "A closed mouth is a cave in which to hide." Moving around with a loose tongue is like running with untied shoelaces you step on them and fall flat.
Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara "Yours Truly" as he brands himself has a long, eloquent, but loose tongue. He has a dancing tongue, the elders would say.
Give him a small opportunity to speak and he speaks like he will never speak again. Like his tongue is brand new and he is eager to use it to the full.
There are times I have wondered whether the DPM listens to what he says as he speaks. The night of Monday November 2 was one such occasion when he spoke and probably forgot to listen to what he was saying.
As he emerged from a closed-door meeting with Sadc chairman and Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila, DPM Mutambara summoned journalists.
Yes, summoned; because "Yours Truly" is a rare breed.
"Is everyone there? Are you all ready? Can I speak now?" he asked journalists who had by then surrounded him, notebooks and cameras in hand.
And he spoke long and hard.
He said Zimbabweans should be ashamed of themselves for not sitting down and talking over their differences.
That there are no alternatives to the inclusive Government and warned that the collapse of the Sadc-brokered political arrangement would lead Zimbabwe into insurmountable problems.
He equated the inclusive Government to a marriage.
Matrimony between President Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai whose fruits the nation eagerly awaited, he said.
In all this, the Deputy Prime Minister Mutambara said he was a mediator.
All fair and fine. But then he went offside.
Beating his chest, he insinuated that "a whole robotics and mechatronics professor" like him should not be brought before the likes of "Armando Guebuza of Mozambique" and "King Mswati III of Swaziland".
He was referring to last Thursday's meeting of the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security - chaired by Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and whose other members are President Rupiah Banda of Zambia and His Majesty King Mswati III of Swaziland.
The professor's remarks were dripping with ridicule.
He looks down on those political leaders he felt were not as educated as he is and can therefore not tell him anything about politics.
Born May 25, 1966, there is no doubt that Professor Mutambara ranks amongst the most educated Africans in this corner of the earth.
His curriculum vitae is quite impressive.
"Yours Truly" was educated on a Rhodes scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, in the United Kingdom where he read for a PhD in Robotics and Mechatronics.
He spent time as a visiting fellow in the same field at the California Institute of Technology, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others.
Our Deputy Prime Minister also worked as a lecturer on Business Strategy and as a consultant for McKinsey and Company.
He has worked as the managing director and chief executive officer of the Africa Technology and Business Institute.
That is a synopsis of Professor Mutambara's curriculum vitae: like the man himself, very flowery.
But the good professor has no licence to ridicule those African leaders who might not have read all the science books that he read.
Politics is a different ball game altogether.
Are we not more educated than our parents? Certainly the majority of us are, but we cannot teach them the facts of life.
Can we?
They have seen more days than us and are natural reservoirs of wisdom.
The same goes for politics.
Professor Mutambara only became MDC president in 2006 after the original MDC broke into two pieces in October 2005 over whether or not to participate in the following year's Senate elections.
It was a miraculous elevation for the world's luckiest politician having been plucked from the air by a seemingly desperate MDC faction eager to eclipse the camp led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
Prior to that, Professor Mutambara's political history was non-existent besides his militant student activism at the University of Zimbabwe between 1988 and 1989, that period of unprecedented hooliganism.
It is a fact that His Majesty King Mswati III has been in politics for some time now.
Born on April 19, 1968, he succeeded his father Sobhuza II in 1986 at the tender age of 18.
He has been at the helm of Swaziland for 23 years now and has chaired the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.
The same applies to President Guebuza, an accomplished business tycoon, who succeeded President Joaquim Alberto Chissano in 2004.
A veteran ruling Frelimo cadre, President Guebuza's political life did not begin in 2004.
He played a pivotal role in Mozambique's liberation war against the colonial Portuguese government having joined Frelimo's armed wing in Tanzania.
President Guebuza led the Frelimo government to the Rome peace talks that ended more than two-and-a-half decades of conflict in 1992 paving the way for that country's first multiparty elections in 1994.
President Banda is no newcommer to politics.
He was Zambia's vice president during the late President Levy Mwanawasa's reign.
He is a career diplomat who represented his country in Egypt, the United States and was at one time Zambia's representative to the United Nations.
President Banda has described his diplomatic career as a launching pad that gave him all the experience needed in statecraft, diplomacy and governance. He was also foreign minister in the 1970s under the administration of Zambia's first post-independence President Dr Kenneth Kaunda.
"Yours Truly", there is a lot to learn from these three African icons other than ridiculing them, don't you think?
Nothing beats a closed mouth Prof, the sages say for it is cave in which to hide.
But maybe when dealing with robots this age-old adage does not hold sway.
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