Mother, of all the ugly men you could have married you picked one with a half-loaf with a peaked-roof for a head! This was one genetic inheritance I could have done without. All my life I have been self-conscious of my odd looking head; God knows, I have been reminded of it often enough.
“The shape of the head does not matter; it’s the contents,” I retorted long before I had learnt to spell my name. “What contents?” Some smart Alec soon asked, waving my graded English examination answer papers with a miserable 10% or some like that.
After that I tried to cover my odd shaped head under a hair style but too did not last. By the time I turned 20 there was no hair growing on the ridge of the “roof”. Five years later, the whole head stood like one of those Domboshava granite boulders complete with the patch work of red blotches from the freckles.
“In life, we are all tested and challenged,” my mother would say. With a bald half-loaf with a peaked roof for a head; I must say I felt challenged; but that was not what my mother was on about. “You might be ugly, poor, not educated, etc.; still that is no excuse for not washing your face.” According to her the act of washing one’s face is a sign of pride and self-respect. If you do not wash your face, people will spit in your face. “If you lose your pride and self respect, other people will like the Cuckoo eat your eggs and replace them with their own.” Wise words indeed mother, as a nation Zimbabwe should pay heed because we have allowed the Cuckoo into State House!
In Zimbabwe, Mugabe and a selected few have commandeered the nation’s vast wealth and resources for their own exclusive use. It is our labour, sweat and blood that is paying for their luxurious life styles. We have had to make do with the little falling off their tables. The ruling elite have their children well fed and schooled outside Zimbabwe at our expense whilst our children are starving and have to use the ill funded local education system that has all but collapsed. Zimbabweans have traditionally attributed their failure to stop Mugabe ride rough shod over their dreams of freedom, liberty, human dignity and the right to life itself to the dictator’s canning and ruthless brutality. But after thirty years of his tyrannical rule and the depths of depravity the dictator has pushed the nation the excuses have worn thin.
Two things have worked to Mugabe’s advantage; firstly the dictator has had the great fortune of having some of the most incompetent politicians on earth as his opponents. After the sham June 2008 elections Mugabe was definitely on the hook and it was none other than Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC party that got him off by agreeing to the power sharing arrangement. The dictator has repaid Tsvangirai by kicking him in the teeth. It is hard to feel sorry for the idiot considering the tragic misery the nation has continued to suffer because of his blundering.
The second, and more significant, reason why Mugabe has been able to do as he pleased is that we, the people, are a subservient lot! Of course we would have welcomed to be living in an independent Zimbabwe in which all prospered and enjoyed freedom and a life with human dignity. When Mugabe denied us these rights and freedoms, we should have demanded that they are restored as a screed duty of every citizen. We owed it to ourselves and posterity to hold our head high and take pride. Instead, like subjects or slaves, we cowed down and rolled into a ball for Mugabe and his henchmen to kick around.
Every nation and every generation is challenged in one way or the other just as individuals are challenged at a personal level. We have failed to rise to the challenge of our time. We must now wash our faces and not allow Mugabe spit in our faces.
Even after the Nazi had the Jews holed up in the Warsaw Ghetto, still they fought back giving the Germans a bloody nose. The Nazi were a lot more repressive and brutal than Mugabe and Zanu PF!
Zimbabweans have been clamouring for democratic and accountable government and yet we have clearly failed to hold even Tsvangirai and MDC accountable for their spell in power. The MDC’s spin doctors pointed to the shops full of goods and Zimbabweans were queuing to sing the party’s praises. How quickly we forgot that the primary task of MDC was to bring democratic change in Zimbabwe, without it nothing much could be achieved.
A working and effective democracy demands a well informed and thoughtful electorate. In Zimbabwe the people have such a superficial understanding of things affecting their lives and such low expectations; they are easily fool and easily pleased.
“What have I done to help end this dictatorship?” is the question every Zimbabwe wherever they are must ask themselves. Indeed it would be more pertinent to ask what they have been doing, directly or indirectly, to prop up the dictator.
The problem of a ruthless dictator in State House is an internal problem and one Zimbabweans can have to find a solution to. Outsiders may help, but it is Zimbabweans themselves who have to take the lead. How well we perform in this will go a long way to restoring our national self respect and pride. Until we can learn once again hold our heads high it will be easy for yet another Cuckoo to make State House its home even if the present occupant is finally driven out.
Zimbabweans it is high time we restored our self respect and stand up to the Cuckoo in State House who has made our lives such a nightmare. This is something we have to do ourselves for our own good and that of our children and posterity! It is high time we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves, washed our faces and walked tall!
1 comment:
A Zimbabwe judge has refused human rights activist, Fari Maguwu, bail.
Here we go again last time Mugabe's sycophants came out in full force in support of the Police for arresting Maguwu without a clearly defined charge(s). They are out again in support of the judiciary for denying Maguwu bail although the State had failed to say why Maguwu should remain in jail. But this is hardly surprising given that the Press, the Police, the Judiciary and all the other democratic institutions lost their independence a long time ago. They are all part and parcel of the dictatorship. They all take their instructions from Joint Operation Command (JOC).
JOC have become the embodiment of the exercise of absolute power!
JOC is out to silence people like Maguwu. Maguwu and millions of ordinary Zimbabweans are out to end an injustice and repressive political system. As long as JOC remains; Zimbabweans will never know peace and the current economic melt down will remain. So we, the people, have everything to fight for and ultimately we will prevail.
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