by Nomazulu Thata| This is just gutter politics of the highest order! Gutter politics that is below the belt in the sense of the word. We cannot be told to vote for women just because they are women. We vote for people who have a credible track record of service delivery. We vote for men and women who have concerns about the plight of our citizens at heart. We vote for people who sell credible national policies and credible clear manifestos. All citizens are able to relate to those manifestos and deem them credible enough to vote for them. We cannot be told to stoop so low and vote for a woman just because she is a woman that is absolute stupid.
MPs Thokozani Khuphe and Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga are taking feminism too far. This politics of panties and female genitals is not real politics you can offer us women in Zimbabwe but third rate politics. This is the kind of politics that has destroyed this country by women themselves. This is the calibre of women we have in our political landscape. We need new names, said NoViolet Bulawayo. It makes us believe that if you constantly talk about women without pants, it will make them hard core feminists: our questions will be. Did you use bottom power to enter politics? Why panties and female genital politics the time you start talking? Are you now trying to use bottom power again to re-invent yourselves yet again? No dear Khuphe and Mishihairabwi, we are going to use our brains to vote, we are going to use our upper part of the pale to vote the best candidates. We are going to vote for any credible politicians: men and women who have credible track record of public service delivery and not gender to determine our vote. That kind of politics is very cheap indeed and we are not buying it.
Nkosana was right when he said we have third rate politicians in our Zimbabwean politics and it is for this reason this country has gone to the dogs. In yesterday’s video Nkosana was articulating policies he is going to implement if he was chosen to be the top civil servant. So far he is the only person who has shown by word of mouth how he is going to tackle and turn around the economic situation in his country. Can Thokozani please do the same? You are both worlds apart with the policies Nkosana promises to implement when he gets to the office. I am coming home to vote, will not waste my vote to vote for a woman just because she is a woman, sorry. So far we do not know what Thokozani Khuphe economic blue print looks likes. She is busy fighting Chamisa without end but is not yes in the election mood at all. Can she tell us what she will do if she was elected as President of Zimbabwe apart from being a woman? Can she articulate her economic policies in the way Nkosana is doing to villagers in remote areas?
Khuphe should not hide behind the fact that she got outsmarted by little Chamisa. That should never be our problem at all. When she outsmarted Gibson Sibanda we never wept so loud because we thought that was politics at play. Curiously Khuphe thinks that they can ride behind Tsvangirai’s popularity and win a landslide majority of 2008. The times have changed. She should use this time not to talk gutter campaigns but should match Nkosana and other credible aspiring leaders in the political playground. To cry so loud using gender and tribal affiliation will not assist much because in Bulawayo and Matebeleland alone, Khuphe is no longer a preferred candidate, she was once upon a time one but not of resent times: she never delivered, times have changed.
This is the time Khuphe should have shown us how capable she is as a leader under such adversaries. A true leader worth of salt comes out brilliantly in such political challenges and rise above all gender and tribal inclinations. We do not buy her female fate alone to vote for her. However, we deeply sympathize with her humiliating experience she was subjected to during the funeral events of Tsvangirai’s passing on.
It is Khuphe’s abilities and capabilities to serve this country that will make us vote for her. We shall want to know how does her political blue print, her political manifesto that she is selling to the electorate look like. What we know is that MP Thokozani Khuphe has no track record of service delivery in those constituencies she was once supposed to serve. She tries to use gender and tribe and perhaps her doctorate degree as her own legitimacy to be the leader of MDC. What did she do tangibly for her region Mathebeleland that will still make us opt to vote for her than other capable leaders in the region? Her impressive face-look, her doeks, her beautiful wardrobe is not enough, but her abilities and capabilities of a politician who knows how to lead a political party and the potential to deliver public service.
To vote just for any woman because she is a woman is politics below the belt. What about those women who will be seeing their menstruation time: are they going to be denied to vote? You are risking 50% of women voters that day alone because you say that day women are supposed never to wear under panties according to your campaign tricks? How are they going to walk in the public during their menstrual days without proper dressing? Did she ever think about that as a woman? This kind of “panty” or “dirty pants” politics is a right off the mature thinking of any credible politician. It sounds more like a comedy than reality. Even feminists in mature developed democracies will laugh this as kindergarten politics not worthy of note: when they say Africans are stupid we cringe! But they are right. This “panty” politics is stupidity of the highest order.
*We vote for people who will take this country forward.* It is leadership qualities, ability, capacity, professionalism that puts bread and butter on the table of all Zimbabweans and not female genitals. This is stooping very low. This should never be supported by any right-thinking women of Zimbabwe. It could be that these women who tell us to vote without pants, and again lift up our dresses to check if indeed we have female genitals have nothing to lose anymore: morally and otherwise: some of them are just game-over in politics. I really think that these women who talk such rubbish must have entered politics using their female genitals: and it is for this reason that they use femaleness again to reinvent themselves. I am sorry about the “unaccepted” language upfront!
It could be that Thokozani Khuphe and Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga have given up their political careers. But for goodness-sake do not sink below the pale in trying to attract voters from women. Women in Zimbabwe do not think with their genitals but with their brains. Women who have gone for girl-initiation ceremonies should know what a female panty means. A female pant is very private. A female pant is the entire dignity of a woman that must not be spoken willy nilly at political rallies. That graphic demonstration of Mishihairabwi at a Trade-Union prayer meeting was unfortunate: A demonstration how women should enter the ballot box, and if she thinks she should vote for the man, she should lift up her skirt to check if she is male of female: Sure, Sure. It is as if to say we think with our female organs: when I see it once more, it will assist me to vote rightly: below the belt in the sense of the word. Did I not know that I am a woman ever since I was born? A prayer meeting should not turn into shebeen night clubs where they show their clients their vaginal faces as proof that they are indeed women!!!!