Talking about fundamentalism and belief, a friend and
workmate who circulates in the universe of Pentecostalism made a telling point.
The subject matter was Chamisa and his claim to Pisgah
sight politics, only matched by his aversion of ideology, structure and shared
leadership.
“But buddie, this is how most Pentecostal churches are run:
no structures, no collective leadership and deification of the founder-leaders
by multitudes of supplicants! What you see in Chamisa — himself a pastor — is a
transposition of Pentecostalism into the realm of politics.”
Dumbfounded, I recalled Chamisa and his Triple C’s heraldic
mantras, like “Behold the New Great Zimbabwe”, “#GodIsInIt” and
“#NgaapindeHakeMukomana” which simulates the biblical Triumphal Entry.
Not to refer to his endless prayers and prayerful gestures
each of which is calculated to suggest faith in agony or a soul atop a mountain
summit in the Land of Moab from which he spies the Promised Land!
The hero-worshipping; the aura with which the little man
seeks to surround himself; his coxcombical obsession with dressing; the bevy of
yodelling harem; the versification of our politics; the evocative, biblical
language laced with pseudo-visions and prophecies; false liturgies and much
more! All these are the stock-in-trade of his politics, the amalgam of which
yield multidimensional props by which sheer knavery, mediocrity and puniness
assumes a dazzling halo of piety and superhumanity!
Behold the puny man
Yet beneath all that is puny man of countless foibles, wild ambition disguised as acme of democratic impulse. Candidates for 2023, we are told, will come “from you the people”, itself a tired euphemism for vain legitimation of egocentric politics.
Triple C, we are again told, has no structures, no ideology,
no leadership yet in reality he is the sole leader, the only structure and the
ideology on which all runs, with a handful of tenacious acolytes, largely
female.
Ideologically we know he is a true chip off the block of
traditional colonial imperialism, which is why his universe is full of
Johnsons, Bushes, Trumps and Bidens, while being reflexively hostile to the
Putins, the Xi and Musevenis of African Struggles.
Competing to own uncontested defeat
By way of political common-sense, his errors of prefigurement
and judgement are simply legendary.
Need we go far?
Ahead of Kenya’s just-ended elections, Chamisa committed
the indiscretion of predicting the ultimate winner, while colouring the whole
social media with images of himself with the ultimate loser!
He hoped events would turn him into a political seer!
Today he cuts a comical figure; a political upstart who
cannot see far, indeed whose Pisgah sights pretensions barely go beyond his
milky nose-bridge!
We in the animal kingdom seem to enjoy better vision than
he does.
We accurately smell where the brew is.
My only warning to mankind: beware of political
Pentecostalism whose zealotry can easily burn the village.
I feel like braying! Herald
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