Legacy of indiscretions?

(Random Trails)

Just what kind of legacy is the former prime minister going to leave?While  one would expect to associate a statesman the stature of a prime minister with governance, ruling, politics and policy, unfortunately for our former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, his stately and political duty have been time and time again drowned out by his below the belt indiscretions.  As such, rather than  being the embodiment of governance, authority and control, he instead could pass for a poster boy for the many different fates women could suffer at the hands of men.

He has jilted; he has deceived; he has led on; he has impregnated and dumped; he has allegedly abandoned one woman to nurse herself back to health after an unfortunate miscarriage; he has said unfair things behind the back of a supposed loved one; he has hurt; he has scorned… the  list goes on. But he is not unique in this.  Some will tell you that he was just being a man — being manly! Whatever the take, Tsvangirai is representative of many men out there who do not behave responsibly when it comes to women. Whether men acknowledge it or not, they are authors of untold suffering and hurting amongst the womenfolk. I will discuss here a number of phenomena, gleaned from Tsvangirai’s example but repeated often elsewhere.

What does he say in your absence?
Just what does he say behind your back?  Are you sure you can trust your man?
Nosipho Shilubane, Tsvangirai’s ex-girlfriend, claims that the MDC-T leader would tell her that Lorcadia Karimatsenga — the woman he had in fact customarily married — was nothing more to him than a persistent woman he never loved.

“He told me he never loved her. He always told me that she was pushing for the relationship to continue but he had told her that it was over. … She bought him expensive gifts, showered his children with money and presents, he said he had told her to stop it and she refused to listen,” Shilubane said in a recent media interview.

Yet now we have reason to believe that at the time he was making these claims, he might in fact have actually been in the process of putting together plans to marry Karimatsenga.
But behind her back, he was saying otherwise. Now this is one woman’s story, but not unique to her. How many other women, are married to or in relationships with men who, behind their backs deny they are in a relationship with them? When your husband is talking to other women, he may or may not be romantically interested in, does he associate himself with you or he dissociates himself from you and even the holy matrimonial union you both pledged to honour and cherish in front of God and man? Does he tell people that he doesn’t love you? That you are just clinging on to him, but he long made it clear it was over between the two of you? Or worse still, does he say that the two of you are long divorced? Just what kind of picture does he portray ? Do you want to know? Or is this one of those things one, as a woman, would rather not know about? Many women may actually never get to know what he says or said behind their backs.

However, I am sure, there are some men out there who will never stoop so low that they degrade their woman in front of another.  Stooping that low, actually says more about the man in question than it does about the woman he is degrading.
Brother, if you don’t love her, don’t pretend that you do?
For goodness’ sake do not lead her on with lies and pretences!

Apparently unbeknownst to her at the time, when Lorcadia was being dissed to her by Tsvangirai, Shilubane herself was headed for her own dissing and disappointment. She was hurt. She was scorned. The ex-prime minister who had built up in her hopes that the relationship would go somewhere. That it would lead to something bigger and more long-term. Yet it was not to be. The former OM disgracefully and dishonourably terminated their relationship. She did not see it coming. Many women find themselves in such situations — where what you were made to believe all of a sudden turns to nought. And the questions that then beg answers become: did he really love her in the first place or was he just trifling with her heart? Or did he love her in the beginning and then change his mind? And so he went ahead and changed “the contract” without her knowing?  That she missed the memo that love did not live there anymore and so she ended up being the last person to know that her man had moved on without her?

Men cannot be forced to love women they do not love. Fine. If a man does not want he does not want. That is not a crime, but what is wrong is for a man to lead a woman on! It would be so much easier for women if men did not pretend that they love them to the degree they say they do. Therein lies the problem.
Brother, if you don’t love her, don’t say you do. Free her and let her be.
-E-mail maggiemzumara@yahoo.ie  Follow on Twitter @magsmzumara