This is in memory of time lost, friends lost, opportunities lost and generations lost. This is to mourn the death of a nation’s pride.
This is a dirge to lament the departure of reason and to celebrate the unwanted gifts from miscreants that time effectively dumped on the people.
Around 34 years ago the State was a country of promises; a country oozing with hope and a country insulated with the goodness of plenty. Zimbabwe was a land of promise.
Since then the Zimbabwean promises have degenerated into Zimbabwe ruins. Promises have been broken and all hope is now lost. There is nothing to hold on to as the deluges of poverty have eroded all the core of hope.
Citizens clutch on straws in the hope that as the soil they stand on is subjected to ferocious denudations they will be spared from being swept into oblivion.
They have hope for themselves that one day success will just come their way. There is hope that their empty bowels will digest this reprehensible poison they are force-fed as freedom tonic into fatty acids and glycerol that will end up as fat deposits on their emaciated bodies.
Who do the citizens owe their supposedly glorious yet inglorious state to? Indeed they owe it to their vainglorious liberators. Yet there is also the misery and backwardness that has to be account for.
They owe it not to their tormentors of the past but to those who claim to have emancipated them from colonial evil. The people cannot find anyone else to blame for their precarious situation but themselves; their leaders; their liberators and their rulers.
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Yes, thirty four years have passed since Zimbabweans voted in the landmark election that got rid of the minority thieves, killers, robbers, capitalists, sadists and muggers.
On that defining eighteenth April 1980 moment, the people of Zimbabwe voted en-masse to install a people’s government.
Thanks to that landmark general election, the political career of President Robert Mugabe blossomed and in the process the careers of his acolytes were catapulted to dizzy heights.
To most the year 1980 is unforgettable. For those who lived the moment the euphoria still lingers in their memories like it was yesterday. There was pomp, ceremony, song, dance, Bob Marley, Mugabe, all and sundry.
There was a great smell of freedom in the air. Some people swore that on that joyful day they experienced heavenly feelings. Such was the riveting experience of the day!
Majority rule came with its own rules of discrimination. Those who won the vote took everything, but not the prisoners. Zanu PF got a healthy 57 seats out of a possible 80. This landslide win effectively embarrassed all the political opponents including Nkomo’s PF Zapu.
Some of us were eternally gutted and devastated when we heard that Zanu PF had won. We returned from exile with our tails of shame neatly tucked between our legs. Obviously we were saddened that our party had lost.
How could we not have been distraught when the better part of our youthful years had demanded that we wear political diapers under the PF Zapu banner? Zapu had given us a political home at our tender age in camps in the mangrove swamps in Zambia.
The pervading feeling was that it was unprecedented for an off-shot to humiliate the “master” in their own turf. The thought of submitting to the political will of what we considered Zapu’s vestigial limb was repulsive.
It was not easy to fathom that a relatively less famed political party had managed to upstage a vanguard party. Nevertheless we celebrated with the victors for they were not the evil minority.
Even though Zapu obtained 20 seats the party followers did not reserve the right to brag.
All the same losers celebrated the dawn of majority rule with winners.
Soon after the vote the rot slowly started creeping in. A lot of people rudely found themselves waking up to the most expensive political gift of their miserable lives.
Right in their eyes, they started seeing their own government feasting on its own people. The government under a morally disabled leadership found it fit to devour citizens in the hope of instilling fear and installing a permanent hegemony.
Some sections of the population were afraid of the government; yet the government harboured fears of the voices of dissent.
The country resembled a prison for those who did not support Zanu PF and Zanu PF turned into a prisoner of its own fears. The government preached hate and hate was dished out to those deemed to be anti-government.
Violence became a norm and persecution of opponents became a national obligation for those who believed in the new dispensation.
ZBC radio stations became a weapon of disseminating hateful vitriol in the name of the State. It became permissible for radio announcers to use derogatory terms against sections of the population.
People were besieged by their government. Small battles were fought here and there and skirmishes with one-sided outcomes were witnessed hither and thither. All this went on in the name of making one mortal appear powerful.
Mugabe wanted to be feared, and fear he continues to evoke from his people. The people lament the lost opportunities for prosperity and peace. Some of those who used to be the purveyors of violence are now realising that they were taken for a very bumpy ride by the Zimbabwean monarchy.
Thirty four years of enduring the perfidy and treachery is 34 years too long. The people have nothing more to do than lament the death of freedom.
Masola waDabudabu is a social commentator
