The Madeleine Albright of South Africa?

The plight of DA MP, Phumzile van Damme demonstrates the futility of trying to enforce an 'us and them' approach with people coming from close neighbouring countries.

May I start by pointing out that the former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was born in then Czekoslovakia not the USA. That did not stop her from participating fully in the politics of her adopted country. I saw no reason why Phumzile's similar political career should be curtailed.

The nature of national borders in post-colonial Africa makes it futile to strictly police the movement of people. In fact along national borders without a distinct geographic barrier, people often do not know on which side of the border they were born.

Take for example Mozambicans who live between Mukumbura and Zambezi river. After Cabora Bassa dam was built the only way they could catch a bus to anywhere was walk into Zimbabwe first. It is therefore perfectly natural and reasonable to expect most of the them to have acquired Zimbabwean IDs.

In Malawi the main road from Balaka to the capital Lilongwe runs along the border with Mozambique on some parts. Hospitals and schools along this virtually unmarked border cater for people from either side of the border.

Colonial borders were arbitrarily drawn sometimes right down the middle of villages. Thus many people living along the border areas can pick and choose nationality depending on what is convenient for the moment.

Where my wife comes from, in Honde Valley along Zimbabwe's border with Mozambique, people used to live in Zimbabwe and plant the crops in Mozambique and vice versa. Movement was curtailed, but not completely stopped, after the border was heavily mined by the Rhodesians during Zimbabwe's second Chimurenga war.

Even along the famous, or is it infamous, crocodile infested river border, brothers' families live on either side of the river. In the 1980s I went to primary school in Harare with Tsveropile Tlou. A long term tenant at my father's house was a Mr Mbedzi. They were Zimbabweans.

Yet they could easily have moved to Thohoyandou or Louis Trichardt and lived as South Africans. I never bothered to find out on which side of the border they were born and to me it does not matter at all.

That is a fact of life South Africa cannot escape.

Surely, surely you cannot go about making people pay for the sins of colonialists, or even their parents. The digging into Phumzile van Damme's origins is just a xenophobic witch-hunt.

It is no different from Republican 'birthers' digging into Obama's origins and trying to prove he was not born in the USA and therefore should not be eligible for the office he holds.

If Phumzile has been living in South Africa as a South African because of choices made by her parents, how is her case different from that of Madeline Albright?

It is an open secret that probably more than half the people passing themselves off as Zulus in Gauteng are actually Swazis and Zimbabwean Ndebele speakers. Some of their children do not even know that they have roots outside South Africa.

While Phumzile's parents may not have been perfectly honest about where she was born, she is still a South African.

Are the gloves coming off?

Those of us who have been blessed and fortunate enough to herd cattle in our younger days know exactly what is happening to Edmund Kudzayi. We come from the generation that enjoyed the spectacle of bulls preparing to fight.

Accompanied by thunderously loud bellows, the bulls would circle each other. Occasionally one would charge the nearest unfortunate bush, or violently plunge its horns into the soft ground - demonstrating to the foe how ferociously he was going to deal with him.

Both bulls would paw and dig at the ground with unnerving ferocity, heads bowed in attack mode. Tufts of grass would fly, like the clothes and bags of a woman being divorced in a Nigerian movie.

In this ferocious scenario, Edmund Kudzayi is nothing but an unfortunate flying tuft of grass. The real fight is yet to come.

As the twilight of Robert Mugabe's rule darkens, and the sunset of his life approaches, the bulls in Zanu-PF are circling each other. Woe betide to any tuft of grass that happens to be in the battle ground. And there is no battleground more obvious than the state media.

Even a blind mole living underground can see the correlation between accusations of using the state media to fight Zanu-PF factional battles and Kudzayi's sudden arrest. It is as obvious as the buttocks of a baboon.

The gloves might be getting off in the factional fight within Zanu-PF. Fists and feathers are starting to fly. Claws are being bared.

Anybody who thinks the turn of events has been unfair to Kudzayi should go and have a little chat with Julius Malema. There are no permanent allies in politics, especially factional politics. The pedestal from which Kudzayi is falling is far much lower than that from which Malema fell in the ANC.

In both cases accusations of state powers being used to further the ends of factional politics have been made. Malema still has South African Revenue Services (SARS) breathing down his neck.

On more substantive matters, freedom of expression, is protected by the constitution of Zimbabwe. In other words Kudzayi has a right to state his opinion no matter who disagrees with it. In fact, he earns his living by doing just that.

If he told lies, fabrications, the constitution and laws of Zimbabwe equally gives potential victims the right to sue him in a civil court and claim compensation.

When police officers break down doors looking for a newspaper editor and long time journalist 'because of articles he wrote' what form of harassment could be more obvious than this. They are not even bothering to pinpoint a specific article as is normally the case.

This suggests that the 'articles he wrote' accusations are just a convenient excuse.  The inner motive for the arrest lies elsewhere. From whichever angle I look at it, Kudzayi looks like a proxy victim of the Zanu-PF factional struggle.

Which leaves us to wonder, is a bare knuckles brawl on the way?