By Tanonoka Joseph Whande
While at primary school, I served Mass as an “altar boy”. It felt good and pure and I loved it. We recited litanies of praise and worship in memorized Latin, keeping in synch with the priest.
But while all looked fluent, there was an issue at stake. Saying Mass in Latin in front of bare-footed worshippers, who hardly understood English, let alone Latin, seemed exotic.
I never took time to think about the villagers who faithfully attended Mass but went home without understanding much. I didn’t understand much either but I was happy with my memorized Latin. There was a certain mystique about it all.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, I chanted with heartfelt religious faith.
I continued the chanting and served Mass when I got to St. Albert’s Secondary School in Mt Darwin but this time, I was taking Latin as a subject and found out that for years, I had been admitting to crimes before God without knowing it.
Today, I mumble the same words but now they have meaning.
It is my fault; it is my fault; it is my most grievous fault.
For, you see, I am part of a nation, part of a people that made Robert Mugabe. He was born among us and we not only brought him up but we gave him the authority to rule us, if something called ‘voting’ is to be believed.
I am a Zimbabwean who joined his fellow Zimbabweans to welcome Robert Mugabe into the leadership of our nation.
We were innocently happy and full of the most of minimum of expectations.
We were blinded by nothing but hope because we had reached the crest of the climb and believed that going downhill was easier than climbing and that ruling ourselves was easier than liberating our country.
But we not only forgot to protect our gains as a nation, we overlooked to secure our individual freedoms; we allowed enthusiasm and euphoria to cloud our vision to the extent that we were lulled into some form of slumber.
When we woke up, we were no longer in a position to bring our leader to heel; our employee had become our master.
A cruel master.
In good faith, even opposition parties joined Mugabe in government.
We gave him a blank cheque, trusting him to fill in the blanks.
Of course, he did not fill in the blanks. He took the bank and made us beg not only for our money but for our lives as well.
What is it that happens to humans when they feel they have power over others? What happens to a soul when it starts to believe that no power can contain it?
“We must always remember that there is no-one here on earth who decides which family he wants to belong to before he or she is born,” gushed former Cabinet Minister Webster Shamu, once Mugabe’s blue-eyed boy. “If I was given the option to choose my father before birth, where would I go?”
He answered his own question, telling a rally that he wished he had chosen Robert Mugabe as his biological father. “I would have said that’s where I want to be born,” he emphasized.
It is called hero worshipping and it breaks all tenets of common sense but is not limited to the likes of Shamu alone.
Today, Shamu is among those kicked out of cabinet for exercising a freedom of choice in his party.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
We created the monster that is Mugabe and the outside world followed us in our praise of him so much that when we started squirming and complaining about Mugabe, no one cared to listen.
Today, Africa believes Mugabe more than it does the collective voice of the Zimbabwean people.
We have called him “the Son of Man” and got rewarded with cabinet posts.
Many times we proclaim that he was anointed by God to “rule Zimbabwe forever”.
Tourism Minister Walter Muzembi shamelessly broke down in tears after being given a framed photograph of Mugabe, saying it was a gift he never dreamed ever to receive in his entire life.
Just last week, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo twitted: “Age ain’t nothing but a number…”
Oh, please, even professors sink so low?
Age is a number, damn it; it increases by the year and so does age.
“The older he gets, the fresher his ideas,” said the professor of Mugabe.
It really hurts when a professor sinks so low.
Moyo says this about a man who goes into meetings and starts snoring as soon as his behind hits the chair.
But, well, here we are.
We are crying, yelling and wailing but no one is listening because we created our own monster and urged the entire world to love and accept him.
Today, we are fighting amongst ourselves; we are a divided people seeking new leaderships because all those before us do not seem able to bring us any relief.
We are polarized because of Mugabe who was supposed to bring us all together, rule equality, democracy and tolerance.
Even the most ardent admirers of Mugabe can no longer escape the simple fact that the man destroyed a once thriving nation as the desperation of the people who have lost faith in the electoral process testifies.
The economy and abuse of the people are issues that speak for themselves and which cannot be hidden from view.
It is a pity that Mugabe has abused the gift of life that God so generously granted him. Some people have achieved positive miracles in a quarter of the time they spent on this earth when others, blessed with long life like Mugabe, have succeeded in pushing a nation and a region further back into darkness.
At 91, Mugabe pretends to see no wrong or catastrophic failures he perpetrated.
If the good die young, what is the purpose of oldies like Mugabe who do not give us wisdom but hatred and who do no good but kill people?
Long life is a gift not to be taken for granted, especially in a country where those in power deny their citizens basic medical minimums.
Like every other dictator, Mugabe got rid of those who liberated the country ahead of him but, like a lackey such as the people around him, he blames the victims.
But, Mugabe and his blind followers better do something fast because their party is splitting up as evidenced by cabinet ministers, Members of Parliament, Provincial Party chairmen, party operatives and others Mugabe fired on behalf of his wife who are slowly stirring back to life and are showing a willingness to take Mugabe head on.
The fact that their most vocal voice, former Presidential Affairs Minister, Didymus Mutasa, formally informed the Speaker of Parliament that the “Zanu-PF led by President Robert Mugabe was illegal” is something never heard of before.
They are also taking the matter to court.
Mugabe, in his typical regrettable style, has called his former confidante and State Security minister “a stray braying donkey”.
It didn’t take us long before we found out that ruling a nation was much harder than liberating it.
It did not take long before we found out that Mugabe cannot rule.
Sadly, there is no viable opposition to inspire a disgruntled nation. They are all busy making useless deals with fellow failures from the past.
No new ideas on the horizon.
Mea culpa? No, it is not.
We are all to blame and it is only us who can stop the rot.
