Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

While Africa remains our beloved home, some of us are pained by the persistent horror tale of disputed elections across SADC and the rest of Africa as well as State-sanctioned excesses against innocent citizens, opposition and civic leaders.

Surprisingly, both SADC and the African Union appear to have no solution even in cases where they would have adopted an evidence-based position informed by their own election observer missions and independent rights groups that would have witnessed massive electoral irregularities and citizen abuse respectively.

We recently saw the SADC summit adopting the report of its own observer mission that said the election in Zimbabwe was a farce. Yet the same SADC has no cogent roadmap to steer Zimbabwe out of the illegitimacy engendered by the same sham poll, meaning the country continues to be run by what the region acknowledges to be an illegitimate regime.

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

I have borrowed the title for this week’s piece from the late Alex Tawanda Magaisa, a friend, colleague and former workmate in the then Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Office.

In one of his epic pieces that I consider to have been his best, that was titled When Mad Mamvura drove the bus, published under his famous Big Saturday Read (BSR) series, the late Magaisa told us a fascinating story of a mad man who once drove a bus that had been left idling at Sadza growth point in the Njanja area of Wedza. The bus the mad man drove away was laden with both goods and passengers.

In his trademark graphic illustration, Magaisa told us the harrowing and heart-rending story of how the mad man, a vagabond at a local growth point, drove a bus and sent everyone around into delirium and serious panic.

Well before the incident, mad Mamvura, who survived through alms at the famous growth point, had been telling anyone who cared to listen that he would one day drive a bus.

As fate would have it, one day, as one of the drivers of a Buhera- -bound bus made a stop-over at Sadza growth point to afford his passengers the much-needed “recess” while he and his crew enjoyed their lunch, Mamvura, the mad man, sneaked into the bus the driver had left idling and drove away as bemused passengers on the bus cried and tried to scamper out for dear life.

Luckily, Mamvura was able to stop the bus before anyone got injured.

Magaisa concluded his seminal 2017 piece by warning the nation of a similar fate. He ominously warned that one day, a mad man might similarly drive this bus called Zimbabwe “ takati vavava ” (under our watch).

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

As the regime frets and quacks in its boots over national murmurs for action on July 31, Zimbabweans must not be threatened out of their Constitutional right to peacefully streetify their anger at a clueless regime that has brought the country to these plumbing depths of penury.

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

The Joint Operations Command has resolved to implement an elaborate scorched earth policy to stem the very real prospects of Zimbabweans pouring into the streets to express their displeasure over the deteriorating situation in the country.

The economic crisis has been worsened by the current lockdown and the regime has resolved to try everything possible to stop angry and starving Zimbabweans from flooding the streets.

JOC, a grouping of all State Security Organs, has held over 13 meetings in the past two months to devise means and methods of stemming the prospects of public demonstrations.

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

The thin veil of national sovereignty continues to be exposed as a vacuous principle by natural disasters and global epidemics that are sending out the loud and unambiguous message that the world has simply become a global village.

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

We are shackled. And this has been the hallmark of our lives for the past 40 years. Tomorrow’s lockdown independence celebrations are a graphic of not tragic illustration of our four decades of national lockdown.

We have been locked down in a brutal dictatorship that saw us jump from the frying pan into the fire in November 2017. Forget the promising early years of our independence and the national happiness engendered by the 4-year tenure of the inclusive government.