VAR doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry about claims that some compatriots may be selling their toes to people who use them for ritual purposes in exchange for money and vehicles.
So serious are the claims, it appears, that even our understaffed and overworked police are now investigating this insanity — where any one of the five long, thin body parts at the end of people’s feet are supposedly being peddled for up to US$40 000 or exchanged for a luxury double cab truck.
Very embarassingly, these stories are spreading like wildfire in the region, with patrons at a Lusaka pub taking the mickey out of the Video Assistant Referee on Wednesday night for this typical Zim lunacy.
VAR’s associate who stays in the notorious Jozi township of Alexandra, and who is used to being insulted as a “kwerekwere” there — an Afrophobic and derogatory term used to refer to black foreigners in Mzansi — was also taken aback last weekend when a tavern employee called him a “filthy toe harvester” after a minor misunderstanding over change.
What is wrong with us Zimbos? Are we now really hawking our toes (yuck!) for a living?
In truth though, VAR is not surprised by this toe baloney. We must accept that this is who we have become. Among other crazy things, we believe in miracle money, quail bird myths and that furiously tweeting slander on Sosho every day will remove the Red Devils from power!
Red Herring
VAR has a lot of respect for Chucky, the interim “tete vemusangano” for the Canaries — a.k.a the Yellow Submarine — even though the owners of the Cult and their close associates rarely give him credit for his significant efforts all round.
For one, he is not averse to hard work and always seems to try his best under the most challenging of internal (especially) and external circumstances.
If he is not on crucial campaign stumps in the rural areas, he is valiantly trying to provide a modicum of leadership on burning national and internal issues, in an environment where there is — in reality — no party, no structures, no members, no roadmap and no money to support him.
In this regard, it’s completely understandable that an under pressure Chucky sometimes tends to embark on flights of fancy, like hoping for a satellite television station ahead of next year’s polls, as he loudly mused about last week.
The truth though is that Chucky knows that this whimsical idea is a smokescreen. He, like everyone else who wants the Cult to succeed, is fully aware that media access is not one of the Canaries’ greatest challenges.
Enter the Viper
For readers who may have forgotten about Copperhead’s many self-defeating edicts, he has — among other decrees over the past year — forbidden all his lieutenants, except one slay queen of course, from talking to the media about the Cult, and even addressing supporters during his rallies.
On the rare occasions where the Cult’s interim leaders have been able to speak to select media, they have needed the Viper’s express go-ahead to do so, which is completely untenable.
And there has been another challenge. Copperhead sanctions interviews by his lieutenants with certain media outlets only, and — even then — this will only happen if he thinks that this will personally portray him in good light. If this is not guaranteed, then the interviews won’t happen.
Unfortunately, what this has meant for interim leaders and followers of the Cult is that the Yellow Submarine has not been able to set news agendas, and to influence and contribute to national debates in the majority of media offerings available in the country — including newly-licensed TV stations.
This is the truth about the Cult and the local media, and not the tripe that is being bandied about by its zealots that they are not being afforded space in mainstream media like the Daily News and 3Ktv.
VAR has all the V11s for this incontrovertible fact and will release them should the Viper and his minions ever claim that these outlets do not want to cover them.
That said, the wish by some political leaders not to want to be covered by some media outlets must be respected. It is, after all, their democratic right to feel and act that way.
However, the same people cannot later lie that they are not being allowed the space to contribute to democratic discourse in the country.
Until next week, Azishe!
