Happy New Year Zimbabwe

The New Year is a few days old now and the dark clouds of misfortune and uncertainty are stubbornly hanging over the heads of Zimbabweans as if to relay the unsavoury tidings of impending misery.

The New Year is a few days old now and the dark clouds of misfortune and uncertainty are stubbornly hanging over the heads of Zimbabweans as if to relay the unsavoury tidings of impending misery. These dark clouds of doom seem to be determined to maintain an ominous presence unless dispersed by something drastic. A Candid Date with Masola wa Dabudabu

The skies are literally devoid of benevolent clouds that could be pregnant with nurturing rain. The gods are ignoring the incantations and invocations from desperate elders during rain-making ceremonies. The dark clouds of ill-fate seem to be devouring the rain-bearing ones. The future of the black nation of Zimbabwe may as well be written off as bleak since the rain bearing clouds cannot subdue the dark clouds of bad fortunes.

The way the new year has begun casts a dark cloud of uncertainty. It began with maximum turmoil and suffering. Here and there agents of disorder and havoc have been seen exercising their right to barbaric behaviour. Payments of salaries of civil servants have been erratic, the rains have failed to deliver the promise of a good harvest and the factories have refused to yield any jobs to the jobseekers. The people have literally been shredded into pieces of despair as they experience untold suffering. The start has not been that great at all.

Despite a shaky start to the new year, there is a glimmer of hope for a new beginning with better things. Most Zimbabweans have resolved to welcome the new year with positivity and hope; a hope that providence will intervene so that goodness prevails. There is positivity that the people’s government will exercise sympathy and good governance on the suffering people. There is hope that the dawn of the new year will eradicate hunger, poverty and suffering.

The hordes of disadvantaged people still nurse the hope that things are set to improve making the country hunger-free, anger-free and danger-free. They dream of freedom from all vices wrought by the perversion and sickness within some of our people’s hearts. This is what honest Zimbabweans who eke out an honest living under these hard times wish for. They cannot wish for more violence and madness upon their kith and kin. No one in their proper senses will wish for drought, hunger and pestilence.

In the true Zimbabwean spirit of humility and patriotism, everyone is united in wishing for a happy nation with no traces of disunity and malaise. Of course there is a small percentage within our population who thrive on other people’s miseries. Some may be like undertakers, who make profits from the broken hearts of others. It is not disputed that the profitability of an undertaker’s business is directly linked to people’s sorrowful losses. Morbid as it sounds, from time to time, undertakers may pray for more deaths to boost their incomes. Indeed, like undertakers who feed on other people’s bereavements, a few Zimbabweans will pray for the country’s bad fortunes just to prop up their personal fortunes.

Having suffered so much trials and tribulations, most Zimbabweans wish for a year free from the enslaving ways of poverty. They wish for a good year that will be followed by many other good ones. The new year should not spell doom even though it started with disaster written all over it. The new year should not cause hopelessness, uncertainty, apprehension and despondency. Instead, it should usher in positive expectations of improved standards of living for all that are underpinned by freedom.

Unconditional freedom is all what the people want.

In addition to the absence of true freedom, Zimbabweans are bedevilled with a host of societal and economic ills.

There is compelling evidence on Zimbabwe’s problems and listing them without preferring solutions could sound like a broken vinyl record if not openly sadistic. The people wish for a better year ahead and the solution is firmly in the court of those who present themselves for either selection or election into leadership positions. The selected or elected ones can make or mar the people’s dreams for better lives in the year that has just begun.

Yes, the people are part of the solution of making the year ahead a resounding success and should not feel pressured to idolise those who frustrate their hopes. The people are the ones who suffer and have the power to exercise their collective voice when demanding a living wage, a living year and a loving environment that is smothered with true freedom.

The year ahead will be realised as a fruitful one if all Zimbabweans can declare freedom as their priority. Surely Zimbabweans confirm to the universal norms in which freedom is not living in perpetual subjugation, pain and hunger. Real freedom, unlike papier-mãché one, endures without pain. Pain is meant only as an ephemeron that aids self-preservation and should not be endured as if it is a sumptuous lunch.

lMasola waDabudabu writes in his personal capacity.