Of Kindergarten jokers and a gullible audience

By Patson Dzamara

That leaders of a country bedeviled with unprecedented challenges and on the verge of a precipice would fight and dedicate efforts including acres of space to discuss a mug is not only shocking but satanic. When the clowns are at it, of course, the gullible audience will be ululating.

 

A few days ago, I learnt that ZBC got excited over umbrella sales to the extent of making that a story on the main news! That’s shocking. Whoever thinks that the economy is boosted by sales of umbrellas dumped from China is a kindergarten joker whose head need serious examination. The investor apathy, cash crisis, potholes, poor drainage systems and uncollected refuse don’t bother them. Zanu PF and its appendages undermine our intelligence but we seem to enjoy their act of mockery. For some mysterious reasons, we seem to enjoy their shenanigans.

In 1983, Mugabe’s ZANU PF led government presided over the massacre of over 20 000 Zimbabweans in Matebeleland. To date they have not accounted for all those lives. Instead they have actually remained faithful to their evil inclinations. My brother Itai Dzamara is one of the victims of ZANU PF’s evil tendencies. He was abducted two years ago by state security agencies and he has not been accounted for. Meanwhile, some ZANU PF kindergarten jokers treat this as something they can joke about while the gullible audience cheers.

In 2008, Mugabe lost an election to Tsvangirai with a “huge margin”. Election results were withheld for more than 30 days after which a bloody re-run was held. The rest is history but 9 years later, at 93 Mugabe is still Zimbabwe’s President. In fact, he is ZANU PF’s presidential candidate for the 2018 elections. By the way, he now resorts to visiting Zimbabwe occasionally and it seems as though he has a home address somewhere in the air because he is always on the plane.

Whenever he returns from his mysterious trips, a gang of his poisoned minions throng the airport to welcome their terror captain. This they do through song and dance. The poor ladies compete to outshine each other in shaking their shrunk and ostensibly impoverished bums hoping they could get the attention of the senior male minions. What a kindergaten joke!

Interestingly, in Zimbabwe everyone is an expert, everyone is an analyst, everyone has a strategy, everyone has a valid opinion, everyone is educated, everyone has an organisation, everyone is everything and on top of that there are over 50 registered opposition political parties. However, it is mind boggling that for 36 years one old and frail man together with his legion of equally morbid and clueless surrogates have been urinating on the heads of Zimbabweans. Talk of kindergarten jokers and a gullible audience!

Meanwhile, Zimbabweans find amusement in tearing up and undressing each other on social media for a handful of likes. We go to town over issues that don’t mean a bag of beans. We romance trivia in a shocking way. Our level of frivolity is petrifying and of epic proportions.

In this land of keyboard warriors, vanity is celebrated. Anyone who dares to take a stand against evil is persecuted. For doing what others can’t do, they are labelled attention seekers by those who sound brave, sophisticated, philosophical and yet they are nothing but a bunch of cowards in real life.

When Evan Mawarire left, running away from that gang of terror we have allowed to preside over the affairs of this country, some grown men and women weeped while others engaged in a competition to give him all sorts of derogatory names. How grown men and women expect one man or a few individuals to risk their lives, fighting for them while they sip expensive wine in the comfort of their homes is ludicrous.

Well, Evan returned yesterday. Upon his return, the keyboard warriors remained true to their colours. Some attacked him for coming back while the other equally surprising bunch concluded that their salvation had arrived. To the latter, it is never about them and what they can do but what another person can do. Talk of kindergarten jokers and a gullible audience!

To me Evan is a senior brother with whom I have a relationship from long back. We are both authors and conference speakers, as such we have interacted on several platforms prior to this activism trajectory. Whatever he is and whatever he represents to different people, Mawarire is not the problem, we are the problem. Even if he is a deceiver like what others posit, Mawarire is not the problem, Zimbabweans are the problem. How some in a nation of people who boast of being highly educated think that their destiny is hinged upon the actions of one person or a few individuals is a kindergarten joke.

While we flaunt our borrowed English accents in our meaningless debates, the country is sinking deep into an abyss. Of course, it’s therefore easy to understand why we cannot speak with a single voice against our oppression. We have so many borrowed accents and identities. We are too artificial.

(Patson Dzamara is a pro democracy activist, leadership coach and author, and conference speaker based in Zimbabwe)