The Best Medicine...

There comes a time in life when all around you avoid you like a rat would avoid a meeting in the light with that whiskery predator called a cat. They cower in mortal dread at your approach, as a lamp post would fear the approach of a sniffing mongrel. You feel an incessant grating at the back of your bamboozled mind, as – huddled under the depth of obscurity – you marvel at your new found state of pariah.

Maybe it’s your mouth – but no, man, it can't be: you’ve just brushed your teeth this morning. Could it be the armpits, then; ‘cause they could be pitfalls full of shit, y’know? No way; 'cause I just spent some light years scrubbing my ass away in the tub, with particular emphasis on pits – all pits, holes and crevices, for that matter.

All the time, the grating behind your mind's back keeps rising to a blaring crescendo, and you give an impatient shake of the head – wait a minute, seems you dropped something on the floor.

It is a question – ARE YOU ZIMBABWEAN?

Aha. So that’s why I find myself in this lonely cocoon, like a leper. I am fucking Zimbabwean!

I am lmao, the kids of today would say. Laughing my ass off. In the wealthy home of our rich neighbour south of the river, discontented children grab whatever weapon of destruction they can get their hands on – fireballs, daggers, knobkerries, rocks, axes or guns – and go on to cause pandemonium on the street. So much for free speech. Most of the times, they take law into their WMD and try to right all wrongs by wiping away the human race – shades of Hitler and his Aryan mantra. You are right; I don’t see the difference either.

But not in Zimbabwe. Not in this bread-basket-turned-basket-case sandwiched between two mighty rivers that we call home. Here we have seen enough of anything to do with fire, blood and death to last our lifetime and that of our off spring. Maybe our brother from our other mother in the south did not get enough of it from Paul Kruger and his Broderbond. Maybe that's why they labeled it 'apartheid'. Ours was war, damn it. The only cold thing about it was a gun barrel, right before it started spitting fire, and subtracting our numbers.

Down south, they speak of Shapeville and how a rightfully marauding young posse of school kids shed the precious, precious red while fighting for the integrity of the mother language. By the look of things they still want more where that came from – only this time they will be wielding the chain saw. Average Joe called it the boot being on the other foot.

But here we don’t do nothing of that sort. Naw. When we hear the war jingles on our stereos, we pull all plugs, switch off switches and find the nearest cabinet to fill. Because we know the anaesthetising effects of a massacre on our people. If we ever forget the sights and smells of a smouldering Nyadzonia, Chimoio and Tembwe; or better still, if, by some Midas Touch, we could erase the memories of a rising sun dripping with the blood of Tongogara on the dawn of a new Zimbabwe, it would really be too soon.

Another war? No, thank you. We would rather die of AIDS.

My fellow Zimbos really have had enough of this v-word – violence. And if one wants a poignant reminder of just how the so-called masses’ patience is wearing very thin and bordering on the brink of abolishing the virulent word out of our language, dictionary and discourse, one simply has to rewind a wee bit; to the ‘runaway erections’ where our Ayatollah ran against himself. He won, of course – but not before the voters were briefly reminded of the hot days of the 70s – the bases, pungwes, sell-outs, stooges, puppets, zvimbwasungata, etc, and also brought with it some new vocabulary of its own; the most notorious was the short-sleeve, so coined after a number of people had had their arms severed at the elbows. All in the name of fighting for our sovereignty. Our land, which is our prosperity. But somebody ended up asking - isn't our land our problem?

Because even during the past farming season, the Lord's rains took their time in coming to water our sovereignty, especially in the perrenial dry lands of my hometown, where the blasted liquid visited well after the crop had died. The people were livid, and you know the Karangas of this land - hot-heads. Like that fading constitutional lawster by the name of Madhuku, they are not level-headed people at all. They gathered under the Tree-with-no-name and resolved to demand a re-run of their own from the Lord. After all, he had just granted the first re-run in this country that saw Mukuru returning to the throne on an overwhelming vote of confidence.

They got their wish.

But in the first ever run-off race in this country's history, the road to State House was narrow and meandering. Full of thorns, threats and traps that culminated in many being forced over the precipe. It was hard going.

Mindful of the impending premature doom of the dear land of the fathers, whose demise seemed to presage the second coming, the innovative citizens settled for a survival tactic that would beat the v-word out of their homes and away from their children once and for all: They took every t-shirt, every zambia, every bandana, every doek, every scarf, every pair of trousers, every jacket and every pair of spectacles that bore the head of the Ayatollah they could lay their shaking hands on and put it on – all of it at once at all times of the day.

Then there was the other paraphernalia – the posters, the discs, the pamphlets, the manifestos, the booklets – we grabbed it all and pasted it on our cars, our walls, our schools, our kombis; everywhere. And our Hifis almost went burst as we blasted and danced away to the tune of 100% total empowerment.

On the street, we identified ourselves by the title of Comrade; hello comrade, we would say in greeting, furiously punching the poor atmosphere with a clenched fist. Even our local heroes now had a new prefix; such that when the national team hosted a fellow African brother for a FIFA match, we had already painted banners and placards to urge our stars in battle – Good Luck Cde Benjani, Cde Esrom, Cde Energy, Cde Peter and Co. Lol, my Facebook addicted pal – his name is Bookface – said; laughing out loud. You people are really geared to take the next fight against war, aren’t you.

I wondered that out as well. Were my people so scared that they resorted to all means possible to keep the only gift their power hungry tormentors were threatening to take away through their promises of giving it – the gift of life? Or they were just so mad at their newly acquired scavenging status that they could not help one last laugh before disappearing round the bend. Because they knew they were on the threshold of the point of no return. They had reached their Waterloo; and there was definitely no point in going there carrying all this dread in their hearts. All the dreads they ever needed were already an adornment on their heads, earning them monikers like Cde (of course) Dread Rasta VeMogo. Word even went round on the underground that one mother took the dread issue one more step into the deep when she flashed her ass in gusto while celebrating the runaway victory of Mukuru. People swear they saw a few strings hanging from a source somewhere near the woman’s… bush.

But this did nothing to mitigate the anger of the most famished among us, who, withering in the scotching hunger while queuing in vain for something – anything – to fool the stomach with during the fledgling days of the cell phone, started punching some words in their outboxes before they pressed send.

The message tone buzzed on my friend’s phone (I didn’t have one then, what with me being allergic to new media technology; but I had began to look for my own gadget, just to keep in sync with the times. But securing a SIM card those days was akin to picking a few carats of diamond when one least expected to), and he passed it to me.

“Maraini abooka mutown,” screamed the message on display.

What!

I almost jumped out of my skin as I bundled myself out of my seat, staggering for the door. I could not believe my luck – a phone line at last. On the way I referred to the life-saving message again, wanting to see where the heavenly manna was falling from.

“There is one for mealie-meal at TM, another one for sugar at OK. Along Chinhoyi Street is another one for fuel. Or you can join the bank line at CBZ.”

Holy shit. The SOB was not inviting me to a melee for phone lines at all; he was just telling me that food and fuel queues were the new tourist attractions in the country! What the eff.

You can take everything away from my fellow country men. You can take their food. Their dignity. Their independence. Their wives. Their beer (but this is at your own peril). Or their football.

But you will take nothing out of their humour gene. Nothing at all.

Sometimes you cannot help feeling pity for them. Like I did five years ago on Africa Day (of all days, Africa Day). I returned from my second home (after the bar of course – what did you think) aptly named Rufaro Stadium, to discover that, at my third home, which I begrudgingly called home, there was all except happiness. Someone standing by my side called it apocalypse, and I patted his back. I couldn’t have said it better myself, for all my Wordsworthian prowess. Apocalypse. The end of time.

Yea.

For, while I watched the DeMbare machine crushing some small outfit that had made the mistake of calling itself a football club in the league of DeNgoz’; some overzealous lot from the Sheriff’s Department was frothing at the mouth and running berserk in the neighbourhood, crushing to the ground my neighbours’ homesteads.

Their reason – the ruling government had decided to call time on all shitty constructions and was setting the stage to restore order. They called that bulldozing operation ‘Murambatsvina/Restore Order’. They destroyed all the ‘Illegal structures’ – the tuck shops, the boy’s khayas, the… everything that had meant anything to the common Hararean. They destroyed his source of livelihood, and they destroyed his resolve to live in the process. Instances abound of several Murambatsvina-induced suicides.

Hoi Polloi shook his head in disbelief; all his life the only place he knew and came to call home was Harare. Now he was being told that the only thing he had been faithful to had declared him persona non grata.

“But, Mukuru; where do you want us to go,” the people asked, drunk with the sinking knowledge that they had just been reduced to the level of street beggars in the blink of an eye.

“You don’t know where to go,” laughed Mukuru, as, from his vantage point at the top, he saw the funny side of it all.

“Do you remember the days when you screamed that I should vacate my peaceful residence in the First House and go, lest I faced some cataclysmic end to my exemplary reign? Those days when you burned all my Marcopolos that I had given to ZUPCO, and I was left with only one Copolo? Those days when you blew your whistles till my eardrums burst, waved red cards chanting, Mukuru Go! Mukuru Go!”

“Where did you want me to go? Huh? Please stop this nonsense of asking me where I want you to go, and go where you wanted me to go that time. Comprehendez?”

Lord of mercy. Those were the days. And new parents made sure we would never forget the events of that year when they starting saddling their fresh arrivals with names like Backyard Shack, Rubble, Illegal Structure, Hlalani Kuhle and… ok, let’s stop there, shall we?

It is all water under the bridge now. But, while it dragged on, it was hell. Even that water that we now watch meandering under the bridge was no where to be seen, having been monopolised under the gripping ownership of a monster called ZINWA.

What the hell is a Zinwa, asked Hoi Polloi as he drained water from the borehole – yes, a borehole. Right in the middle of the sunshine megalopolis. Would there be an end to poor Hoi’s woes? What the fuck is this Zinwa that has taken all the rights to our water?

“You don’t know,” responded one old man who couldn’t stop reminding us of how things were in the time of Smith. “The water has been seized by Z. everything that starts with a Z is trouble, I tell you. Listen to me, because I know how things were in the day of Smith. Take this water-gobbling Z, for example – it stands for Zimbabwe No Water Authority. Then there is the Zimbabwe Electricity Sometimes Available (ZESA), the Zimbabwe Farting Association (ZIFA), the zhing zhongs… trouble, trouble, trouble.”

We laughed until we wet our pants and lost all the water that we had fetched from the borehole. Oh, the z-word.

“So what does ZANU (Pf) mean, mudhara?” One of us asked.

“Trouble, trouble, trouble.” The old man seemed to have entered his own cocoon of trouble. We could not rescue him, for the simple reason that we could not take him to the time of his endeared Smith, which he craved for. All the time wondering whether he meant smith the profession, or Smith, the person.

The end was nigh. We could smell it in our neighbourhood when the cholera epidemic blew almost half of us across the dreaded divide of the earth during two short years made by Satan. So. Was this it? Were we to breathe our last in this suffocating vicinity of the dinghy hall we called our nation, where we had just been taught a thorough lesson about the difference between ruling and being ruled? Even Samanyika wept helplessly as he watched the stinking whitish fluid of his life cascading out and burning his ass hole in the process:

"Asi Mwari diko uzombori unfair so. Wamwe unowauraya ngeaccident. Wamwe unowauraya ngedzungu. Asi ini waa kundiuraya ngemanyoka here Mwari! Ngemanyoka here diko?"

You could literally see the eerie creature hovering over your head. Sometimes you talked to him, and you would ask the one question that was on everybody’s lips: “Dear Death, why are you doing this to us? Haven’t we suffered enough?”

And from above came the grim reaper’s chilling monotonous baritone: “I’m just doing my job.”

Jeez, what a job - creeping the hell out of unsuspecting people and taking their lives. Who would even wanna work there?

But, during the ignorant years of my life, mother told me that nothing ever lasts forever. I couldn't believe her, obvioulsy, taking the example of her and my father - these two had lasted more than forever for me. But that was me at the zenith of my ignorance. And so was Death during his killing spree when he closed most homes with his soulless deeds, but, shortly after his bombastic outburst, Death got fired from his beloved job. That was early last year, after the overdue marriage of some two opposite poles that had seemed destined to put their God-given fatal attraction on the ice for ever. Wonders never cease, they say. But the nuptials of our unwilling femme fatales came with a little sour taste in the mouth, for nobody came to the festivities – death had indeed done his job as per instruction; no more, no less.

Death’s replacement, Hope looked to rescue Man-on-the-street’s drowning spirits by celebrating his appointment with a party of his own, where he hoped to drown Hoi Polloi’s sorrows in a lot of liquid spirits that he had brought from the Land of Plenty. But his sojourn to this blessed - or cursed - land almost came a tad to late; for people had grown tired of praying in vain hope, and were now only waiting for the ultimate demise. In the last days, their prayers went some thing like; 

 

Eternal God

We put our faces on the ground and our buttocks in the air before you today as we beg you to forgive our sins, even though, we black people, haven’t sinned. I’m saying this because we are not the ones who killed your only son, Jesu Kristu - white people did! Then they came to colonise us!

As you know even better than we do, your Kristu was betrayed by a white man, they handed him over to another white man who ordered him to be whipped! Moreover, these same white people ordered him to be crucified! The traitor was called Judas Iscariot. You can check this out, we don’t have names like Iscariot here in Zimbabwe, we are called: Chinotimba, Chenhamo, Njonda Chimangaiso, Musorowegomo, Chakezha, Musvoriyondo, Gumbonzvanda, Matirasa, Nyadzisai, Svodai, Svotwai, Musvombhonori, Nhomborokisheni, Sviravava, Chasura, Chematama, Shumbayaonda, Chandengenda, etc...

We have no clue where the Golgotha (that’s the place where they crucified your beloved son) is, we just know how to go from Chiadzwa to Mupiniwasvotoka to Zvimba to Ruangwe to Tshikwalakwala to Charandura to Mayobodo and come back. Except maybe Cde Made, who we read on every piece of cloth or metal as a well-travelled man - Made in Italy, Made in Brazil, Made in Bhiriteni; Made everywhere. But I tell you, he had nothing to do with the sad death of Kristu - we were all tending to our cattle in the pastures at the time.

We’ve never been to any of the holy cities in the Bible; therefore we can’t possibly be implicated in the crucifixion of our Lord. If you don’t believe us, please watch the movie “The Passion of the Christ”, and you will see for yourself that no black person, let alone an African or a Zimbabwean took part to that sad event.

This is why we beg you, O Lord Almighty, please make black people rich at long last and let white people work for them for a change!

We saw Hope's posters defacing an already defiled environment, where-in Hope invited us to a free mother of all parties:

“Zvakazoitika Promotions, presents, live at the Chinotimba Stadium, the Mother of all Galas,” the posters screamed.

“Featuring; Handiende Mbira Crew, Tichatonga Ensemble, Madhongi Amera Nyanga Jazz Band, The Chamatama Boys, Orchestra Election Run Off Kings, and many more…”

And what a party it was; my heart sang its flabbergasted wonder, as I saw an inclusive mass of people of all races frolicking the night away at this prolonged gala that led to a beer shortage for the whole of the following week. We had had so much of it that one visitor from the Land of Dreams – walking in a stupor, so full of dreams that surely had no place for an image of a black president ruling the nation of opportunities in them – found himself empting the contents of his piss pot by the walls of the sheriff’s domain.

The sheriff was drunk out of his mind too, but he still apprehended the offending element, letting him off with just a ZW$50 trillion fine since it was time for merry making. Talk of being in the wrong place at the right time...

The guilty party produced a US$100 note. In this country, at the time, a Ben Franklin was simply an untouchable minor deity. He could not be fragmented into any smaller denomination anywhere, except maybe at the Bank-in-Chief itself. And our dear stupor-stricken friend had nothing like a Zimdhombhi in his possession.

It was time to think outside the box.

“You can see we do not have the change here, son,” the sheriff said calmly. “You have no choice, but to go back outside and urinate some more…”