guest column:Tendai Ruben Mbofana Recently, I penned an article to the effect that, most of us who are brave and unrelentingly standing up, and speaking up (in the process, placing our own lives in grave danger, but for a very worthy cause) against the ever-increasing gross repression and human rights abuses, unrepentantly shameless corruption and looting of our national resources, and economic policies only comparable to madness, that are being brazenly perpetrated by the elite opportunistic ruling clique in Zimbabwe, were not in any way in the payment of any foreign country — but, I felt a compelling urge to write a follow-up, as the pain I feel from such an insult, still gnaws at the core of my heart, like an acute heartache, caused by the cruel stab of a blunt knife. To be honest, I am failing to shake off the anger at the thought of anyone ever suggesting such an outrageous, insulting, and clearly provocative statement. I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to rubbish this most ludicrous comment, as mere mindless rantings to be expected in the “game”. of politics — as those in the ruling regime, would, naturally, attempt to recoil (and barricade themselves) from the imminent shattering tsunami of widespread national dissatisfaction, rage, and dissent — at the hands of a citizenry it has ruthlessly disempowered, disembowelled, and disenfranchised, with cruel and sadistic recklessness. But, then, this is not a “game”! I have always had serious problems with those who seek to define “politics” as a “dirty game”! There is nothing “sporty” about people’s lives. There is absolutely nothing “playful” about turning the lives of millions of a country's citizenry into abject poverty, surviving on food handouts — whereby, innocent people, from the elderly, widowed, disabled, young, educated, uneducated, employed, unemployed, and self-employed, line up (like sad paupers from fairytales we used to read at kindergarten) to receive a small parcel of basic foodstuffs — which, even a street beggar in a fellow southern African country such as South Africa would afford to buy for himself. Only a thoroughly demented individual would regards an elderly widow (like my mother) dancing and ululating like a little child — after receiving a two kilogramme packet of rice, and ten kilograms of mealie-meal, having queued for endless hours in the scorching sun or chilling cold — as a “game”. In fact, if I were to go out today and stab to death only one person — no one would laugh that off, as having been “only a game”. So, why on earth would anyone -—with even the least amount of working senses — consider politics “a game”, in which people’s lives are played like simple chess pieces — who can have their livelihoods callously and cold-heartedly destroyed, workers’ earnings stolen and reduced into a child’s “jiggies pocket money”, their health compromised due to lack of medication or its unaffordability and our children’s future ruined as school becomes out of reach for the poor? Yet, those in the elite opportunistic ruling clique live lavishly