"THE FUNERAL PARLOUR THAT HAS BECOME ZIMBABWE!"

THE FUNERAL PARLOUR THAT HAS BECOME ZIMBABWE

 

(How do I welcome people at a wake?)

By

Tanonoka Joseph Whande

 

 

I meant to welcome all of us right here a few weeks ago but the evil that is being perpetrated in our country left me shell-shocked. I found us, as a nation, in mourning.

We keep dying and coming back to life. Anyone who never believed in zombies should come to Zimbabwe.

 

It was Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre who said hell is other people.

 

Are we?

 

The three weeks of madness that the world witnessed in Zimbabwe, only a fraction of decades of torture we in Zimbabwe have endured, should help to make the world understand that Hitler left seeds and had disciples; that many Lucifers are alive and well and living in State Houses.

 

The pictures of the swollen lips and faces of legislators, parliamentarians and leader of an opposition party that you saw came at a price. For you to see that, we had to lose one of our own.

 

I find it just about impossible to believe and accept that Robert Mugabe, a man born of a woman, can be so casual about the lives of fellow citizens.

 

Mugabe has used state funds and apparatus to sharpen the fangs of our youths and then turn them into cannibals. Today, we witness the aging egos of irrelevant manipulators calling upon our children to die and to kill on their behalf as we are shoved haphazardly into a corner like discarded shopping carts in a supermarket parking lot.

 

 Our youths, with insufficient education, jobless, hungry, misguided, desperate and without leadership, have now been turned into connoisseurs of murder and mayhem, preying on fellow citizens, and indeed their own kith and kin, who have not committed any crime against them but who are perceived to have wronged the ageing murderers and thieves in our nation.

 

So, these same despairing youths, from our very own loins, killed Edward Chikomba, just because some washed-up, weather-beaten old scallywag wanted to hide his political poo. Chikomba was killed for carrying out his duties, for informing his own people and the world about the brutality of the murderous Robert 'Pol Pot' Mugabe.

But the scariest thing is the lack of remorse in people, Africans, who were dispatched to assassinate Chikomba. Is this how to fight imperialists or whoever it is the old geezer sees in his daydreams?

 

The ghosts are in the State House grounds and they are not going to let up. The man has killed too many and no human blood can ever be spilled just for nothing.

 

Dust to dust and ashes to ashes, yes, indeed.

 

 But when that dust or ashes have blood of murdered innocent Africans, don't be surprised to see some 'honourables' chasing and swatting imaginary cockroaches in airplanes.

 

Mugabe had to tell his wife and children about Edward Chikomba. He had to say something to them since, to him, Chikomba was a threat not only to the nation, as if the whole lot, including pa himself, are patriots, but to them. The 'First Family' must be smiling as they see one perceived 'enemy of the state' having been decimated and, thus, their welfare, once again, assured.

 

But you do know, don't you, that someone is going to pay for all these heinous crimes? Whether Mugabe dies in office or not these atrocities will be avenged. What Mugabe is doing everyday is to ensure that his family will never live in peace wherever they will end up long after the dictator had been shoved six feet under.

 

I knew Edward Chikomba.

 

I worked with Edward for many many years at the then Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC). He was the technical director on many of my television programmes. I found him there when I returned home from school abroad and I left him there when I was, not surprisingly, forced out of my job. Edward was at the ZBC not because any of those notorious 'chefs' and corrupt party and government 'stalwarts' did him a farvour. He was there because he knew his job and he knew it well. Amiable and a perfectionist, Edward was not the kind of person anybody would have suspected to be manhandled and die in such a barbaric and horrible manner. No one can imagine a government or a president ever doing such a thing to his own citizens.

 

One of our own is down at the hands of a government that is supposed to protect us all. I recall our former colleagues at the ZBC, people like the musical Dick 'Comrade Chinx' Chingaira and Thomas (Tommy) Mandigora, who now represents our nation in Botswana. Tommy and Chinx, is it okay guys?

 

Advise me.

 

What do we do?

 We can't just keep quiet.

 

We are hungry for freedom and deliverance; so hungry are we that we are cannibalizing ourselves to please irrelevant and evil men.

 

Every time I look in the mirror, I smile as I applaud myself for something I consider nice that I might have done. I have caught myself turning my eyes away from the mirror when I recall some not so good deeds that I might have been involved in. A mirror reflects a reality and when one looks into their own eyes, something stirs inside.

Does Mugabe have a mirror in his many residences? What goes on in his mind when he stares at himself?

 

 And what romantic fantasies flow though Grace Mugabe's mind when she looks first at the wrinkled murderer lying next to her and then at the battered body of a dead parent recovered from a bush. How does it feel to her to know that in order for her to enjoy undeserved extravagance, someone's son, father and husband must die? Grace and Gabriel. Such noble names from God's lexicon of decency but yet the twin centres of greed, murder, intolerance and viciousness in a lovely country called Zimbabwe. How come a mother to the nation does not feel compelled to count her chicks only all the time?

 

And to Edward, my dear fellow, I say: 'Rest well, my friend. You can never be forgotten. Not even by Mugabe himself. Mugabe's archives are full of photographs, documentaries and news items that you, yourself, filmed. We will not let you evaporate. You are with us and we are with you. Rest well, my friend. Just remember that some cowards made a hero out of you and we are damn proud of that.

 

 You didn't lose anything, Eddie, but we lost a history maker and Mugabe should remember your overburdened shoulders as you captured him on arrival from Mozambique fooling everybody, including you, about his intentions about Zimbabwe. Like the rest of us, you believed him. Today he has killed you for doing your job so well. You have not lost but we, including Mugabe himself, have lost.

 

From your demise, dear friend, I have learned never to wrestle with a pig because, you see, if you do, you both get dirty. And the pig likes it.

 

We need not fight Mugabe at all. Oh, no, it is not necessary. We just have to remove him. And no individual is working on that, Eddie. Everybody is working on that. You did your part, Eddie. Rest well, dear brother.'

 

The Heart of the Matter....

 

...... is that, because of Mugabe and his shameless popinjays, Zimbabwe has become a funeral parlour. We are being killed by ourselves. It need not be like this. Mugabe is marveling at the resilience of this nation. He came down on it with the entire devil's power and failed. Yet, today, we are passing condolences amongst ourselves. But there is no disease outbreak. There are no flash floods washing away our homes and loved ones. There is only Robert Gabriel Mugabe, ironically named after one of God's more famous and farvourite angels, causing death and destruction. Like that late reggae musician said "Mugabe is doing the devil's evil."

 

I love Zimbabwe.

 

It is a beautiful country full of beautiful people and that has nothing to do with Mugabe.

 

My compatriots, I salute you and please let's meet here often. Let us share ideas. Let us talk to each other. This site is only an enabler. No one is going to talk to anyone. We are going to talk to each other. We have a common goal. Love you lot's and Zimbabwe should be ready for the very first Chimurenga, not the fake chimurengas geared to extol a tyrant.

 

 Brothers and sisters, let's talk!

 

 

I am Tanonoka (Joseph Machenjera) Whande. Over to you!

 

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