Food for thought before you cast a vote for a black Donald Trump

By Tafi Mhaka

As my father and I had sat high up in the stands at Rufaro Stadium, together with thousands of ecstatic compatriots, we waved small Zimbabwe flags with vibrant enthusiasm and enjoyed the wonderful entertainment on display. It was Independence Day in 1982, and I was young, happy and gullible.

We listened closely as Gushungo spoke and excited the crowd with fiery rhetoric, African flamboyance, strong determination and English flair; and left Rufaro Stadium convinced our future looked bright because Gushungo knew best.

He certainly did; because Gushungo understood us: he understood our Shona way of life; our deeply traditional and patriarchal culture; our magnificent language and heritage; our innate social and economic struggles.

And everyone loved that collective sentiment; and everything – the tremendous adoration and absolute awe thrust on him, felt just right.

We celebrated the men and women who gave pangolins to Gushungo all the time, and danced to Mbuya Nehanda from Harare Mambos regularly, but hardly listened to the words carefully and never questioned what independence truly meant to us.

We disregarded the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia and the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in China and hardly noticed when General Omar al-Bashir ousted the civilian government of Sudanese Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi in 1989.

We wouldn’t have wondered why several military officers staged a coup attempt in Ethiopia hours after President Mengistu Haile Mariam left on a visit to East Germany in May 1989. And we wouldn’t have known that the then-Ethiopian dictator would establish a comfortable home in Gun Hill, Harare in 1991.

We simply danced rather awkwardly in African darkness and prayed for sunnier days.

We may have watched Born on the Fourth of July, the Oliver Stone film based on the Vietnam War, but definitely failed to care for our war veterans and that woeful indifference resulted in “Black Friday”, the ominous day when the Zimbabwe dollar fell by 71,5% against the greenback and the stock market crashed by 46%, after unbudgeted-for gratuity payments crushed our economy.

Our populist waltz trudged all over the need for serious soul-searching as the flag waving masses handed Gushungo blanket approval for devastating tribal-based rule which seemed exhilarating, trendy and truthful at the time, but history reveals otherwise: such fanaticism, coupled with unchecked strongman rule, is always laden with undeserved approval, gargantuan deceitfulness and severe abuse of authority.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” has led to over 12 000 Filipino deaths to date; and socialist-laced Chavismo bankrupted Venezuela after Hugo Chavez failed the people he “represented”.

“We are confronting the devil himself”—the American imperialists and their Venezuelan lackeys—“at the ballot box,” Chavez declared ahead of the country’s 2006 election. “You are not going to re-elect Chavez really, you are going to re-elect yourselves. The people will re-elect the people. Chavez is nothing but an instrument of the people.”

Yet the late-president’s family owns 17 country estates, totalling more than 100,000 acres, in addition to liquid assets of $550 million stored in various international bank accounts, according to Venezuelan news website Noticias Centro.

However, even amazingly rich anti-establishment leaders have failed to deliver on extravagant campaign promises. Donald Trump has evolved into a disastrous failure in the USA after ascending to the presidency on the back of several amazing promises made in 2016.

But he has failed to build a high wall between the US and Mexico; he has failed to reform Obamacare; and he has failed to renegotiate NAFTA and stop company relocations to Mexico. He has done the exact and highly effective thing populists do: excite the masses with grandiloquent twaddle; then do nothing.

He has failed; and it’s nothing new: Gushungo and Zanu-PF have failed time and again. While our collective expression of civil action – our sole and emancipating avenue towards authentic change – has experienced an excruciatingly long and gory stillbirth.

We have failed the eight traumatised children who were deported from South Africa on March 6.

We have failed Mbuya Nehanda and all the women who continue to suffer at the hands of men.

We have failed Joshua Nkomo, Matabeleland and tribal minorities.

We have failed ourselves and failed our democracy.

So how and when will Zimbabwe rival Rwanda and elect a president from a minority tribe? How on earth will we ever base our electoral choices on sensible and rock-solid evaluations when sweetened fanaticism and unceasing intolerance is the order of the day?

Dr Yusufu Bala Usman – the late Nigerian academic – described the futility of blind adulation, tribalism and rampant populism, when he said:

“If you are emotionally attached to your tribe, religion or political leaning to the point that truth and justice become secondary considerations, your education and exposure is useless. If you cannot reason beyond petty sentiments, you are a liability to mankind”.

That’s food for thought before you cast a vote for a black Donald Trump.