By Luke Tamborinyoka
Today, Friday 29 November 2019 is supposed to be a special day for my family. It is my beloved daughter Lynn Tsungaimunashe’s birthday.
Yet she is spending what is supposed to be her special day in medical detention as she battles excruciating pain, amid a burgeoning health crisis in the country’s clinics and medical centers.
Lynn Tsungaimunashe underwent a complex medical procedure on Monday, amid an unmitigated national health paralysis. Morale in the health services sector is at low ebb.
Doctors and other medical staff are on strike for very legitimate reasons while basic consumables are scarce in all our medical institutions.
As a family, we went out of our little way to buy the consumables for our special daughter. We ran far and wide as a family and did all we could to raise whatever foreign currency we could to procure the consumables ourselves and to have her urgently attended to.
I have a loving family but my brother Paul deserves special mention in this our collective journey of love and sacrifice around Lynn’s health complications.
May God bless you, Mhofu.
Like every other Zimbabwean family, we could not afford the luxury of having her airlifted to India or China to receive prime medical care for four months at the taxpayers’ expense. Our only option was filial trust and all we had to do was depend on one another under these stressful times.
Indeed, I have a loving family—special brothers, sisters and aunts—who have all come together to ensure we do all we could for our dear Chihera.
Yes, Chihera. That special breed.
We are not what one would call a family of means. But what we have in abundance is unstinting love for one another. Nothing is worth more than the dear life of a beloved child and thank God, she is clinging on because the Lord we serve is a God of eternal goodness and mercy.
God is firmly in charge. I know and I am certain that my dear Lynn Tsungaimunashe will definitely survive this fleeting phase.
Elsewhere, Zimbabwe is on tenterhooks due to incessant price hikes, power outages, fuel shortages and inadequate remuneration for the lucky few still at work as the nation accelerates towards an inevitable implosion.
Mnangagwa has basically provoked everyone to ensure that we all revolt against him.
Our doctors and nurses have very legitimate grievances yet the illegitimate regime responds by firing them from work.
The teachers are not happy. Their salaries are not enough to buy three kilogrammes of decent beef, which is now going for around $200 RTGS per kilogramme.
There is a very real crisis in the civil service and in the nation at large, which you can feel and touch with your bare hands. .
It’s a ticking time bomb. And it could bow ANY minute.
Millions of our educated youths across the length and breadth of our country are not employed.
Women can barely afford sanitary ware, let alone food on the table for their families.
In the rural areas, scarce maize meal is being distributed on a partisan basis.
Only last week, Mnangagwa’s paid merchants of violence came at our doorstep at Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House to disrupt President Nelson Chamisa’s Hope of the Nation Address. Rogue security forces beat to pulp everyone within the vicinity of that building, including old women and children, passers-by and by-standees in bank queues.
I say rogue security forces because our genuine and patriotic men and women in uniform are also suffering and they cannot afford that callous brutality against their fellow compatriots, whose only crime last Wednesday was to be in the vicinity of the MDC headquarters.
This regime is doing all it can to provoke and incite us into action. And we will definitely oblige!
We have become a nation of genuine grievances to which no one is even granting an ear.
In our case as the MDC, not only have the regime’s running dogs of violence come to our doorstep to provoke but they have also banned all legitimate political activity by the party. They have proscribed constitutional demonstrations and banned our rallies, including the rally we had slated for my home area in Domboshava in Goromonzi West a fortnight ago.
All legitimate political activity has virtually been banned as Mnangagwa dares the nation by sticking up the middle finger to all Zimbabweans across the sectors!
The scarfed idiot should know that when the official market for genuine, sincere and honest political activity is closed, you open the way for the black market!
For someone who came into office through that unofficial black market route, he must understand my postulation.
Villagers, those in urban areas, in the mining towns and farming areas are all suffering. Teachers, air traffic controllers, doctors, nurses and our patriotic men and women in uniform are all suffering.
In the barracks, there is no food as the Commander-in-Chief dares his suffering subordinates!
This repression and suppression of legitimate political activity is an open invitation for an insurrection. When one presses a spring for too long, one must be mindful of the rebound.
The rebound could even be fatal!
Mnangagwa has ensured that the whole nation is agitated. He is daring the nation and very soon, the people will oblige.
Zimbabweans are a heroic people and they will definitely not turn down ED’s open invitation for a national revolt.
If ED wants an early Christmas present, we will definitely give it to him!
When it comes—as it shall very soon—the action will not be the miniscule handiwork by a handful of miscreants bent on nihilism. It will be the ultimate avalanche!
And it is none other than Mnangagwa himself who has become the personification of this despicable national penury. For this reason, we will continue, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, to hurl all our vitriol and combined national rage at the decisive point.
As Napoleon Bonaparte would say: “Concentrate your fire on a single point. When the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and all the rest becomes useless!”
Happy birthday, Lynn Tsungaimunashe.
Luke Tamborinyoka is the Deputy National Spokesperson of the MDC. He is a multiple, award-winning journalist and an ardent political scientist who received the Book Prize when he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science at the University of Zimbabwe.
