Dear Zimbabweans

Dear Zimbabweans

Bucking the predeterminism trend
“Don’t lose it before you fight for it”

Just yesterday (20th of November) I was talking with my friend on the implications of the situation, now unfolding in ZANUPF party, Zimbabwe, where we see all along that ZANUPF was using the country to play its own games, to right their messy house. We also talked of the likelihood of their preferred candidate, Emerson Mnangagwa, to really embrace democracy and accept defeat when he is defeated in the upcoming elections, will the army now accept the will of the people and let the opposition form a government. He said NO. I felt the same too. It’s ZANUPF we are talking of here. My friend’s reasoning doesn’t stem from the fact that Mnangagwa would have been defeated. He said he would steal the elections; its business as usual, the ZANUPF way. He said already the new registration system for voters in the upcoming elections, BMV system has already been tempered with to make ZANUPF and Mnangagwa win next year’s elections. How, he has no idea, but in his mind the ZANUPF has already stolen the elections. The opposition will not win is a predetermined thing in him. My cousin feels, like a lot of Zimbabweans, it is better for us to concentrate on removing Robert Mugabe, and for Mnangagwa to take over and we should give him time, even when he knows Mnangagwa is not good for the country and will still keep the status quo, that he will steal the elections. My cousin doesn’t want to think beyond removing Robert Mugabe and installing Mnangagwa. He feels Mnangagwa will all of a sudden change and will have the country at heart. He doesn’t think the opposition should be given a chance to win it. It is predeterminism in him that the opposition will still fail against Mnangagwa. My question is; why we are not pushing for what we really want in Zimbabwe? Why are we accepting these as eventualities as if this is all that we can have, and be? Why are we still scared of ZANUPF, to the extent that we still give them our right to determine where we will go in life.

Zimbabweans have gone through the worse process of instilling democracy in Africa, maybe in the whole world. We have fought against one dictator for over 37 years. He was a wily, mischievous, smart, and formidable polarizing figure. No one didn’t even think he will be around for over a week after the army had taken over, fighting for his presidency. The more he stayed the more he dug deeper, the more a lot of people got confused, demoralized, and gave up. After he refused to resign several times, and read one of the most wily speeches ever, telling us to go to hell, the morrow day everyone begin to question the whole process, where it was going, whether it will succeed in removing Mugabe and Mugabeism. We had doubt, doubt with doubting the process of bucking the predeterminism trend. He had to go; either through the purging process, the negotiation process, the election process, though I have to admit, I preferred the election process, but going he has gone now through negotiations. We have lost a great chance to make it worthwhile for the country if he had left through the constitutional processes, that is through impeachment and the election route, than negotiations. That way we could have jailed him later for the crimes he committed on us, and demand that he returns the money he stole from us. If we were smart enough, in the next elections, around July next year, and there was a clean sweep to power for the opposition, then we could also have jailed every other thief and abuser. We could have demanded they be tried for destroying our country, for breaking and making broke the country, and this would have acted as a good lesson to those whom we would have elected to lead us tomorrow. For this status quo to continue, for ZANUPF to continue bleeding us, for us to keep failing to arrest back the country from these crooks is a complete failure on the part of the Zimbabweans and their future.

This letter is a call to every Zimbabwean out there to choose which battle to fight. They are many battles to fight in Zimbabwe now, and most of these do not get us out of our current quagmire. The first battle is to stay alive, to find food. The second battle is to fight against political expediency which the majority seems to fall for most of the times. Some had chosen their battle to be only about removing Robert Mugabe from power, only that! And these were mostly ZANUPF people and a number of political expediency undiscerning people. The others had chosen to fight the battle to install Mnangagwa into the ZANUPF and the country’s political arena. And they also succeeded. Some have chosen the fight to be about the next elections, to fight to have opposition parties take over from the corrupt ZANUPF. And there are millions more who don’t care who wins. They are already convinced nothing will ever change, they are losers of a fight they have no guts to even try to enter. This group consists of the largest chunk of Zimbabwean voters. Here is a simple math to work with. Mugabe has always accumulated around 2 million votes in the past election times; March 2008, June 2008, July 2013, and they has been small incrementals to his tallies for the last 10 years. The Tsvangirai MDC’s, at his strength in 2008 March election, got over 2 million votes too, but in 2013 they went down to 1 million votes. It’s a very simple phenomenon. Most of the voters, young voters who voted for the MDC in 2008 left the country during those tumultuous years and most never returned back. They are no longer counting to the MDC votes, rather if you subtract that, that’s why we see the MDC has lost votes. Everyone knows that most of the ZANUPF voters are old people who have a deep connection with the liberation struggle, and these didn’t leave the country in the last ten years more than the MDC Well of votes. The MDC and ZANUPF both together have polled around 4 million votes in the last 2 elections they competed. If you check the census on 2012, Zimbabwe has still pretty much the same population as in the last decade, meaning they were at least 2 million people who were either registered but didn’t vote or who never even registered to begin with. Usually, in any country that is politically literate, the voting numbers are more than half of the country’s population, and that means our figures of voters should be around 7 million. But a lot don’t bother. They are defeated even before they voted

I know for a fact in the 2013 elections, in my street, Svosve road, in Zengeza, Chitungwiza, those who were registered to vote and really voted were just a third of the total number of people eligible to vote, but they didn’t bother to register let alone to vote. Ask any voter in Zimbabwe, they will attest to this. This story predominates in the whole country. This is problematic. These are people who don’t care where the country goes. These are the people ZANUPF use to stay in power. ZANUPF has made the election process and voting unattractive and painful to these people, thus preempting them of their right to participate. It’s the same as with when a child experiences pain, he may develop different personalities in an attempt to bottle up the suffering. The pain is delegated to one of those personalities which he calls bad, so other characters can be free but neither is evil. Undoing these generations of misaligned educational policies of the democratic process is impossible without an unshakable sense of self, a clear purpose and a lasting commitment. This country they call home has devoured them such that their personhood (agency) is misaligned with relation to spaces of competing orders. Had these people been voting, ZANUPF would be long since gone. The connection between identity, democracy and space would have been purposeful, and the exploration of it (as theme, motif, and trope) in this text is methodical in that we carefully craft these unsettled figures on both competing and complimentary spaces to engage the ever-present theme of predeterminism and constitutional exercise of rights. But place and location has had the ability to devour these dwellers literally and metaphorically. Thus then in this literally text, I propose space as text, a signifying theme that can be both liberating and debilitating. And once these Zimbabweans begun to see themselves as not only the owners of Zimbabwe, but also the protectors of it, they will develop a positive sense of self, and will continue to contribute to the development of the country as a whole. Thus we can spirit-rise our dreams together. This experiment is not about our root systems, but about the space between us that has kept us from achieving on our dreams.

Then among the people who used to vote, and still vote for the opposition, some have given up hope, some skip voting sometimes, some discourage others who want to participate, some are still confused who to chose to fight for in Zimbabwe. this is made all the more difficult by the fact that Zimbabwe has ubiquitous numbers of parties and politicians in the opposition fold, with each dreaming to be the next president; Morgan Tsvangirai, Simba Makoni, Nkosana Moyo, Ndumiso Ndabengwa, Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti, Lovemore Madhuku, Joyce Mujuru… the list is longer. This has always made it difficult for the voters to decide which leader to vote for to remove ZANUPF. These leaders profess to be against Mugabe, but if you burrow deep why they can’t find common ground to work as one entity, you will realize they are driven by personal ambitions, ambitions to enrich themselves, ambitions to be the next Mugabe, ambitions to be kissed by the populace, and rarely ambitions to right the country.

The cult of personality has also destroyed the country and Tsvangirai and Mugabe have been the high priests of this cult personality politics in Zimbabwe. These were the drivers of this cult personality. Mugabe is now out, but that won’t stop the ZANUPF from creating another figure head, and it seems the new cult will be built around Mnangagwa, and he will become a huge clothe of red-blackened cloud that will continue to shipwreck our ideal country and memories. Going forward baring illness, death or these leaders being deposed from their respective parties, Tsvangirai and Mnangagwa will be the new leaders of these camps, the opposition and the ruling party respectively. These two individuals will continue telling the story of Zimbabwe. We will see soon, when we start again into the elections mode, the ZANUPF supporters will all coalesce around Mnangagwa whether they like him or not, the opposition supporters will break the opposition vote into 20 plus groups and personalities, thus Mnangagwa will win it. If we are really serious about removing ZANUPF, it’s time for us as voters in the opposition, who constitute the majority of Zimbabweans, to take it into our hands and chose which battle to fight, which leader to band around, and give all our votes to this leader whether we like or do not like him or her. It’s getting clear now that for years, even though the biggest chunk of ZANUPF supporters had fallen out of love with Robert Mugabe, they were still voting him to power and that stayed ZANUPF in power. They moved beyond the personal preferences and feelings, and coalesced around one figure and have all benefited with that. They are very few people in the ZANUPF who would say they never benefited from the party through its 37 years in power.

Some got farms, some got jobs in the local authorities, central government and national organisations, some got scholarships to study, some got housing stands, some got government contracts, some got goodies like food, farming and household stuff, some got farms and land such that hunger had taken time to translate itself into anger against Robert Mugabe. They consumed all the food they got, mismanaged the farms, destroyed the government and local authorities they lead etc, as if by accident, without desperation or a mind to conservation for tomorrow and then when hunger had settled in they folded all their fingers of blame at several of their leaders into one pointing finger against Mugabe. Then they started as fog of war against Robert.

But those in the opposition parties have fared with little and saw their country being bled out by the ZANUPF people, thus they suffered worst than their counterparts in ZANUPF. Yet the leaders in the opposition politics could always get donor funding, and abuse these for personal enrichment, and are well-off, but their supporters are poorer. But all of us have fared badly as compared to ZANUPF leaders themselves. I feel it must now stop to be about ZANUPF supporters vs. Opposition parties supporters, we all have suffered. The ideology of Us and Them among us people must end. The fences and gates cannot keep realities separate, the us/them binary fails because the two contrasting worlds are interlocked in a collective experience. We have to achieve the bifurcation of the humanist spirit together, from philosophy, ideologue, identity, economy, education, nationhood, etc… into reality, politics, science, art and poetry... We have to transcend the us/them binary thereby offering ourselves room for collective affirmation and existence beyond the control of party signifies and identity signifies like race, class, gender, sexual orientation… in simple terms this letter serves to galvanize everyone who is against ZANUPF hegemony to work together for the better of our future. This is our country too. You don’t need to have gone to war to be a citizen of a country, there is no requirement like that in our constitution. We were all born in Zimbabwe, we grew up in Zimbabwe, we have stayed in Zimbabwe, we have all built Zimbabwe, we all love Zimbabwe, maybe differently- it’s all our country. It is time to wrestle it away from those who think they won it by a gun for themselves. Let’s band together and fight the new Mnangagwa cult.

At least a number of the opposition figures have put aside their differences and rose above party lines to create an alliance, the MDC alliance. Maybe the best hope we have of going forward is to go with this alliance. Let’s band around this group. If over 4 million voters who do not vote for ZANUPF in every election period all vote for this alliance, then we are going to kick ZANUPF out. Its narrow minded and shallow to think Zimbabwe’s problems were caused by only one man in Zimbabwe as the idea that seem to be propagating. The whole ZANUPF cabal is responsible for destroying this country. It’s better for all of us who don’t like ZANUPF to do this and wait for what happens after winning the elections next year, than to say the elections are already won by the ZANUPF, and wait for ZANUPF to continue to plunder our country. The army boss has said it succinctly.

In the last 5 years there was no development that happened in Zimbabwe other than ZANUPF political soaps and shenanigans. He said he is afraid of Zimbabwe degenerating into the lawless and strife torn that Somalia and the DRC have been. I know he was speaking of the security issues and the possibility of a war here, but make no mistake, with ZANUPF still leading us, we are sure going the DRC and Somalia route, only not in security issues but also economically, if we are not worse than those two countries already. It’s your job and mine to see that we don’t go this route. ZANUPF is not the answer to our future. It’s ZANUPF we should be giving the feeling that they have lost before they even start voting. For goodness sake they had 37 years to build Zimbabwe, why do we want to give them more chances, to do what now. We are now the poorest country in the entire world, don’t we feel ZANUPF has achieved enough by sentencing us to this throne.

Wake up Zimbabweans, let’s have thinking hands like a musician’s hands and vote for the best that gets us dancing after elections to the music of our pens. You attest to be the most literate people on the continent, but you can’t seem to know how to use your education the right way. Why are the most literate people refusing to exercise their right to vote? Why are the most literate people still getting used by ZANUPF? Why the most literate people don’t seem to know what the best way for the country is. Why the most literate people seem to be the most stupid and confused in Africa and the world. What literacy is that? Let’s embrace political literacy and activism, let’s tell every Zimbabwean who has every right to vote to go and vote. Let’s decide now the way forward to our future. Let’s decide what we are going to feed our families with, the schools, the roads, the water, the sanity etc… that we want for our families. When you don’t vote, you condemn yourself to failure. This is your right. Exercise it.

I don’t like Morgan Tsvangirai. Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube, I don’t like the MDC, but I will still vote for it. I have to position myself as a subject in a multivalent spatial matrix to measure democratic space and practice here. This merit attention; let’s reorder reality at every level for ZANUPF has disrupted our understanding of personhood. The MDC is still our best chance to remove ZANUPF. Zimbabwe politics is still about who has the best chance to represent your needs, not who we like or love. This is our democratic space. Here space denotes more than a marked room or a static enclosure; in fact space finds itself most complexly understood in time, moment and movement. Go to the elections with this attitude and win it for the country, and then we can talk of other opposition parties and the future after voting ZANUPF out. It’s as simple as that. You can look for yourself there is no N’anga (fortune teller) up my sleeves.

Makudo ndemamwe angarwisana pakudya asi papfumvu anorwirana (Baboons’ togetherness is that they fight each other over food but when in danger they fight together)

I am one baboon up for a fight against danger, join me!

Thank you, Ndinotenda, Ngiyabonga

Don't be used again!

Dear Morgan Tsvangirai

Don’t be used again!
“A ball that is a ball will always be a ball.”

Inanimate objects move only in dreams and fables. In this letter I am going to move an inanimate object, that is, a ball. The soccer ball is round and made so that it will roll on the ground in a fair way, and will travel a bit slower in air than other balls like the rugby, tennis, cricket, and American football balls. The soccer ball’s life is unenviable. It travels more that any other game ball, it is overused as it only stays in the hands of players few times, mostly protected by the goalkeeper, if the goalkeeper is not bouncing it off the ground trying to figure who to kick the ball to. It is kicked for 90 plus extra minutes, it is thrown tens of times, handled several times, it travels the pitch more than all the 22 players plus substitutes combined, it is hit, it hits players, goal posts, the ground, gets bumped. And at the end of the game, it is thrown off, left alone until the next game. It become an object at rest, it stays at rest until acted upon by these players again. The 22 plus players, their coaches, the supporters go out, get more out of the work of the ball; limelight, awards, respect, community etc... As the games continue the ball build the players, the coaches. The supporters are happy. Are you happy? Morgan, I feel you are the ball that the country’s players have used each time they play their games! I am sorry for insulting you but I have to write this narrative. It is a narrative that oscillates between the gentleness of the falling showers of rain and the wears of hope after disaster, bringing haunting truth and beauty pulled through memory. It is a timbre of memory of sound, these memories are layered: a sound, smell, a sight: a kind of remembering, a witnessing!

Look at the beautiful years and work you did over the years at Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. How you transformed a small government organisation into a formidable foe to Robert Mugabe’s government. How you went toe to toe with Robert Mugabe who had goons behind his back to protect him against you. For years you fought, you were the ball the workers, the politicos and industry played. Yes, it helped you to form the MDC, and this accorded you a lot of respect in Zimbabwe, so are some other balls in life, like a baseball ball that Jack Robinson, and the basketballs that Michael Jordan etc…, populised. The world over became aware of you, but the games never stopped on you.

You entered another game, and the people of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe and his party were now the players. They played you for years on end until you finally had a chance to retire, to wallow in glory like Michael Jordan’s balls. No, not those you are thinking of! You won fair and square the March 2008 elections false ushering in a brand new year at a time when we believed that sort of thing, in scheduled change. Some still say you won enough to form a government, but one of the goons of these players refused you rest. Mugabe’s goons pushed you back into the game and the changed the game on you and other players. They started playing American football, were using the American football ball whilst the people were still using the soccer game ball. I told you the soccer game ball travels slowly in air than the American football ball. And the American football ball is built in way that it bounces off or rolls off unfairly on the ground. Also the American football ball can be thrown and kicked willy-nilly, as long as it is going forward. Also Robert now didn’t care about you, the ball, but the people. American football players rough it more than the ball, and they play rough brutal games on the people who were still playing their soccer ball that you are. Robert cheated you by killing players of the opposition. And then grabbed you into his hands and told the world they had to recognize him as the winner since he had taken you hostage. He told the world he would give the people a few of his substitute players. He gave the people a few ministries to butter their world with a reason why he had to keep you in hostage. The world accepted him as the winner of a no contest game and awarded him the trophy. At the end everyone had to accept these conditions. Morgan, you were so gullible to allow Robert to put you in his personal collections/trophies counters in his Munhumutapa offices. To the outside world, to his opposition, the people; he told them he is taking good care of you as you rested.

But that was all a lie’s white truths, so black, Morgan! He played games with you in his Munhumutapa offices, games he had played and won against Nkomo, whilst he legitimize his wins. He allowed his first team players he kept in the government to play more games on you. And those players he hadn’t kept in the government were set on the people, to turn the people to supporting Robert. You were played left and right until Robert Mugabe felt he could revert back to the soccer game with the people. Until you had cleared the bills and the financial issues that had accumulated whilst Robert slept like a disease and an ill-fitting cure. I mean until you had righted the economy for him in the GNU years, until you had helped him mend his party that was in tartars after the March 2009 elections, until he had won more people to his side.

The people and Robert decided to create a new constitution for their future games on you. But what you never realized more and more of the people distrusted and lost faith in your abilities as a leader. They begin to question the linesman; referee etc, saying the ball they were using had been overused, tempered with by Robert during the GNU years. What Robert did was to deflate you, kill everything that made you strong, and removed air from you, you became floppy and flappy. He allowed you to make stupid flops like those woman escapades, the corruptions of your councilors..., and made capital out of the flops.  All these you did because Mugabe had tempered with you. You became a operatic version of a crow, a blue jay figure skating in a blue custom flying only when the wind blows, and the wind was Mugabe. So when the people decided to the reverse fixtures in 2013, Mugabe trusted you more than the people. The people decided to field a weak team, didn’t even prepare for the match, and were busy scrutinizing you and what Robert had done to you. Robert used this combination of a flattened ball and the bored weak opposition to win the 2013 match, and discarded you as he formed his government with a full team and reserves, taking back all those position he had given the people during the GNU years. You simply didn’t mount to diddly!

He continued with his games in his team. This time he decided to push his team, each against the other. He created a new game association. He created new camps, and the leaders of these camps were Emerson Mnangagwa and Joyce Mujuru. Since he was tired and ageing he decided to rest a bit and created a part-player, part-referee, part-boss on the game association, in his wife. She played the games on his behalf, against Mujuru and Mnangagwa. Robert rested. Morgan, you also rested and nursed your wounds. This new game was vicious and was played with one gun(Robert) in the hands of this player, Grace Mugabe. The other players had no weapons. She played the game of elimination. Grace used the AK47 to kill of half the players and Mujuru in 2014 and replaced these with her favored younger players, some says for sex payoffs, and these were set on Mnangagwa. Mnangagwa was knocked out. What it did was to make everyone realize Mugabe was a ruthless bastard. Grace killed everyone, killed the government, killed the party, and killed the country. Yet Grace and Robert underestimated the power of Mnangagwa as he went scuttling, hiding, it was said he went to a land of strength to the east, and in the eastern lands he returned back wielding battalions and battalions of goons that descended on Robert. Morgan, I know whilst all these things were happening you were now fighting a different game in your party and personally. This game is dangerous too as it involves biological invasions deeply inside your body and party. You are fighting an illness, how it is wearing your body down, gnawing second by second at your will, pounding suffocating pain , surfing away a mountainside, eating you down until escape into the pitch becomes the only lover you want to hold now.

I have heard you are back at work, Morgan- hanky panky all over, strutting like a cock. You have been asked to come back to the pitch again. Those players, Robert‘s team and the people have missed kicking you around. They are telling you that you are the best ball ever. I am surprised you have forgotten you were recuperating, you were not even fit enough to lead your own party, have barely tried to connect with the electorate, to win back all those people Robert pushed away from you during the GNU. You have adopted more new balls in your party to strengthen your chances of not getting picked as you were ill, but they have picked you again. Are you fit to be played for another 5 years by these players who now seem to have multiplied since Robert open the can of worms…, I mean his armpits. Morgan, know that they are going to play you rough for the next 5 years. Know that this time they will kill you one way or another; know that by the end of the 5 years no one will bother about you ever and your new balls. Yes, they you want to legitimize the whole charade and their thuggery of a game they have been playing through you. Yes, you will right the economy for them again, the country, the party etc.., and then they will discard you off for the last time. Nobody will touch you again. This is what they did to Ndabaningi Sithole, Edgar Tekere, to Joshua Nkomo, to everyone the people had loved. A big question on my mind is, are you genuinely in opposition to Mugabe or it’s just been a game you played on us. A boy who caught a falling star in his hands, who liked the way it purpled his palms, deepened the shallow tracks of his lifeline. Why do you keep trying to save Robert and ZANUPF from disappearing into oblivion?

Morgan, you must have said no and refused to enter the GNU in 2009, that was used by the army and Robert to stay these thugs and thieves in power. Understand it is the army that has been playing Robert and you all the last 10 years. It is the army that told Robert not to resign when you beat him fair and square in 2009, and cooked a situation whereby a GNU was a process they used to right the party they so died for. What did the army tell you when you won. They told you Zimbabwe is for the gun, not pen. What did they tell Robert just some few days ago? The country is for the gun. Only those who fought in the liberation war have the right to lead the party and government. What makes you think the army will change their tone when you win. Now see how they have deposed Robert, their leader because he refused to follow their rule. You are nobody to the army, Morgan. You are just some sponge going to be used to stay the goons in ZANUPF. You were stupid to enter the GNU when at that moment you had Robert and the army by their balls. It’s a different kind of balls I am talking of here! In the process you defrauded people of their right to see Robert off forever.

Now you think it’s a different game. It’s easy for you and your other balls to be fooled by the situation and think Robert, Mnangagwa and the army are done. No, they want to buy time to sort their messy home. They have realized this game of bullets they were playing in their party has destroyed the party. What you are going to do is to allow them to defraud the other team, the people, of their right to vote these thugs out of the government in 8 months time. Like I said before, 10 years ago, refuse to enter this charade of a game. Let them finish each other off. Let them destroy the party completely. Stay safe and wait for the elections which the constitution guarantees. Tell your other balls to pump air up, and go back to the people and win them over.  Focus on your party, believe it is broken, and fix it! Prepare your party for the elections next year. Demand for elections to be done next year as per the constitution of the land. Refuse to enter the GNU. I am afraid you would contract a wretched disease that Nkomo contracted- inflamed patriotism of the cerebral membranes, syphilis of spirit, a patriarch of dead organs. They will absorb you into the ZANUPF party and our blessed dream we fought for multiparty democracy will revert back to one party state of ZANUPF/MDC. Insist on the constitution. Now these thugs have messed what you built during the GNU, now they want you to help them stay. You know what’s in the basement of ZANUPF- only an idiot would go down there, and you know equally well, though you believe you are not in fact an idiot, that you are going to go down those stairs again. Tell the other team to stay stronger, tell the people to stay stronger. It’s only a matter of 8 months, and then they can help you clean up ZANUPF, Robert, Mnangagwa and the goons, off our streets. The truth is they are not going to allow you to win after you have helped them stay in power for another 5 years. Do the skies ever open out to transparency. For goodness sake, you never went to war.

Siya vaurayane nokusunguna (leave them as they kill and jail each other). Leave them to implode. Don’t forget its these who destroyed the country and MDC, and when they had succeeded in destroying it, in last elections, why didn’t they ask you join them in government like they are doing to you now. After all it’s the ZANUPF that is dead. Zimbabwe must be fixed through elections, not through building back ZANUPF. Leave Constantine Chiwenga and Mnangagwa to create their own governments and they will be null and void in 8 months time. Beyond that they won’t be recognized by the constitution and SADC. Leave Mnangagwa to create his power hungry cabinet, and leave Chiwenga to continue with a coup that is not a coup. I didn’t say don’t support any moves that do away with the monster Mugabe, no. Support them but don’t be fooled into joining them in the proposed GNU. The letter might seem to be saying you shouldn’t help them destroy themselves, but know that always in accounts of anything, much is left unsaid in order to make what is retained more capable of being focused: don’t enter the GNU! I have cried out louder so that silence won’t betray all that we have worked so hard to avoid: death of multiparty democracy in Zimbabwe. They have only 8 months of constitutionality, and beyond that fight them, get help from the international community, force them to do elections. You will now win; their games have restored faith in your supporters to vote them out. Those goons are done and dusted. Now recuperate and if you fine, go to your party and lead them to the elections. Engage the people. Tell them you have their backs now. Show us how much you have changed. Because if ever we agree to return to your world again, it would be on the condition that you did pass through panel beating, and you are now wiser and changed. Please, stop this tomfoolery. Don’t be used again. Don’t lose this country again. You are our hero. You are endowed with great destiny, which corresponds with the level of your epicness and with the aid of the gods, your success is inevitable. And a character all the more heroic as you are is more inclined towards mastering the forces which lie outside the scopes of your naked human personality like the strident Jeremiahs of the Old Testament. Rule the day, Morgan. Leave the night to Mugabe and his goons, the ZANUPF. All the pain we were subjected to for the last 4 years will be for nothing as we help you build back the goons. You are the bridge that connects us, that should wait to connect us to consciousness again. The elections are around the corner!

I know you and your balls are power hungry like Robert and his thugs but know that posterity will simply laugh you off as a fool who stumbled on a good thing and messed it. I know all these prohibitions in this letter will only be mere echoes in a void, they will fill nothing. Your heart is set on joining the charade again. You gullible hands don’t feel my epoxy melting; will sign off to another GNU, unfurling the illusion again. But I really feel sorry for you, and that’s why I had to write you this letter. Posterity will blame you for allowing power hungry monsters to steal their future. You will become a giant that was destroyed by hubris, like Othello, Macbeth, Kane etc…. your response is predetermined. It is trained like B.F Skinner’s rats. This argument in this letter has everything to do with morality, you have a choice. Try to make people you know happy, this time. The conscience of a race is the gift of its individuals. You have no mandate to be party to this. Stay out of it and save yourself and your party.

I am the ball they played more than you, now I refuse to be played again

NB. I want to encourage fellow Zimbabweans to fight this new game in town, to refuse to become party to it, to continue persevering and fighting for the next 8 months to elections, to organize themselves for the vote, to not embrace another shortcut that will be a long way to freedom again. 8 months are not as harsh as 5 stable years followed by another 4 harsh years to another election. Reject this nonsense! Say NO to the monster that the GNU is! The hard work of moving forward must be done as our grief becomes the new homes where we will live until freedom’s breath of winning the elections inspires every house, every song, in every street in Zimbabwe.

Thank you, Ndinotenda, Ngiyabonga

Identification with right!

Dear Robert Mugabe

Identification with right!
“Enough is enough, what is enough?”

I am on the pyre of my thoughts, burning down, deep inside me, walking on broken boulevards of deterred dreams, trying to find voice to my soul that burns in this fire. For some time I have avoided using my pen to deal with this burning, now I have no choice. I have decided to use this paper and pen to write you this letter, Robert Mugabe- to live in defiance again. I would like to ask everyone else who reads this letter, every Zimbabwean, everyone who loves Zimbabwe, every friend of a Zimbabwean to join me in this journey. I know this is too small a ripple in a sea of deliberations, but I offer this as one teaspoon at a time, draining off the ocean. Let’s write letters to Robert Mugabe, to the army, to the Zimbabweans, to the world, and let’s post them on social network sites, news media sites, let’s exchange these letters with our friends, or families, our colleagues, the world over. Let’s use this literary form to protest against Robert Mugabe, our jailer. Let’s be confident that the religion of resistance will always triumph over the technology of repression. Send me your letters too; I will post them on this blog. Post your letters into the wind, and let the wind carry forward your messages to the world over, to the creator. Don’t worry about which language to use, whether you feel you are not a good writer, whether you feel no one will ever read your letter. Just know that even a rock dreams that it was a mountain, that’s why we have stone heads on top of mountains. Instead of reaching outward to change the world and scare off, look inward to experience it, to change yourself, to create authentic power. Just write down what’s in your heart; just write it to yourself, just read it to yourself. When we create authentic power again and again, we become authentically connected and powerful. It is an opportunity for each of us to process the anger and pain we have against Robert Mugabe. The streets are ready for us. Let’s use this process to heal and find peace with ourselves again. It is a chance to love ourselves again, and find faith in this country we call home, which Robert has made his playground. Trust the grate’s fire to again allow songs in Zimbabwean homes!  Let’s speak out!

Human beings are meaning-oriented beings. We tell stories that explain what is really happening in our lives. We are sick and tired of you, Robert Mugabe. It’s not that we didn’t love you. It’s just you couldn’t love us back the way we did you. It’s not that we will never love you again, it’s just that we stopped now. Yes, years ago we loved you, looked up to you and supported you. We thought you were brave, wise, and beautiful, we believed in the ideas you flipped off like gospel, but there is now nothing to love about you. You have gotten long in the tooth. You have taken our love and shitted on it, on us, day after day, for over 37 years. You urinate on us and call that trickle-down effect. All that we have known in our body politic was you as our leader. We were born when you were already our leader, we grew up with you, we became adults, started families, went to college, started careers, only to realize that you had destroyed everything that we fought for, everything that we thought was our country, our future. We have become old men and women with you as our leader, fighting you! Your greedy hands, and the equally greed hands of time moving mercilessly onwards. Leaving us with nothing but sorrow, disappointment, anger, remorse, guilty… So what’s good left in us to love you with?

We fought you for years and years and you still continue subjecting us under your vicious rule. Haven’t we paid enough for allowing you to liberate us? Haven’t you taken everything that we thought we also fought for? Haven’t you made us villains in our own country, refugees in our homes, and paupers in our land? Haven’t you driven us out of the country? You say you fought for us, so did you fight this war to punish us later? Did you fight this war for yourself and your family? We have worked, slaved all our lives and continue to slave under your punitive yoke so that we would earn a living and fund you with our taxes which you use to feed your family; money you steal, money you misuse, money you bastardise, money you use to bleed more from us, becoming an expert in minding your own business. Robert, we have carried you on our backs like lice, whilst you drink our blood dry the way the sun’s light bakes dry the earth. Now you have drained our arteries and veins. Robert, we plead with you to leave our political landscape. Just leave us alone. Let us go, please. We will be fine without you. We don’t need you. Robert, an active partner look for the empty lands inside and between him or her with their partners to fill it up, thus without filling it he becomes a worse, more isolating kind of partner!

Robert, you have destroyed and killed everyone against you from the moment you came into our world. You pushed out Ndabaningi Sithole from ZANU-PF helm, and over years you told us Ndabaningi was a sellout and tribalist. Robert, you killed Hebert Chitepo, Josiah Tongogara, Leopold Takawire. I know you say it was the Rhodesians who did that but this is what we have learned to know you do so well. Everyone is wrong, everyone is a tribalist, everyone else shouldn’t be the president except you and your family, everyone is guilty except you, not even until they are proven guilty! Isn’t that your ideology? We know you pushed out, Nkomo; you killed over 20 000 civilians in Matabeleland, and swallowed Nkomo back, killing him bit by bit for over 12 years. How sad he must have felt all those years working with you his conqueror, and when eventually the creator took him back, how happy he must have been to finally rest far away from your dark painful shadow. You called him a dissident when you fired him. You told us it’s him who was wrong; who was plotting to start a war against you and had arms cache hidden at a farm. You told us it’s the Ndebele people who were wrong. You killed them in thousands, in broad daylight.

You pushed Edgar Tekere out of ZANU-PF. You were so shameless to push out the one who brought you into the party, the one who gave up his position to accommodate you, and over the years you insulted him and frustrated him until he died a broken man. You told us you were the one who was right, that Tekere was a tribalist. You destroyed Morgan Tsvangirai, insulted him, beat him up, call him names like Chematama, jailed him, and attempted to kill him several times. You killed, maimed and pushed millions of Zimbabweans out of the country who supported Tsvangirai, calling them traitors. You killed Tsvangirai’s wife, and thus, you killed him. Ever since, he has been a pale shadow of the Tsvangirai we loved and fought for, the last two decades. You killed, maimed and pushed out the white people, taking everything they built for centuries, destroying industry and agriculture. You called them names. You told us they were not Zimbabweans. You extruded them out of the country. Are you Zimbabwean yourself? Is your father Zimbabwean? Why didn’t you leave too? Everyone knows your father was born in Malawi, so which Zimbabwe were you talking of? Does being Zimbabwean only equate to blackness! You haunted Joyce Mujuru out of ZANU-PF after you had succeeded in killing her husband, Solomon. You burned Solomon to ashes. You told the whole nation Mujuru was plotting to kill you, to remove you from power, was visiting N’angas, and we still wonder how you got to know that if you were not doing the same thing. You made us be laughing stock. The world laughed at us, that we still visit N’angas, that our leaders still take advice from N’angas on how to run a country. You succeeded in haunting her out.

You have killed, laughed and ridiculed everyone who stood up against you like Simba Makoni, Ndumiso Ndabengwa, Lovemore Madhuku, Tendai Biti, Learnmore Jongwe, Welshman Ncube, Nkosana Moyo, Herbert Murerwa, Ray Kaukonde, Dikamai Mavhaire, Shuvai Mahofa, Didymus Mutasa, Andy Flower and The Zimbabwe Cricket Team, The War Veterans, MDC, Trevor Ncube, Jeff Nyarota and several Newspapers personalities, ZBC, Jestina Mukoko… the list is endless. You called all these counter revolutionary forces, you told us they were tribalistic, were plotting against you. You made yourself a victim every of these moment. You called us to support you against these. Are you the country, Robert? If the whole country seems to be plotting against you, there is something wrong with what you are doing. Why don’t you just leave the country so that people won’t plot against you? You have made Zimbabwe your little garden. It’s up to you which tomatoes and cabbages need harvesting for food. You have made Zimbabwe to be the poorest country in the whole world. You have made Zimbabwe a laughing stock to the world. Is this the Zimbabwe you fought for? Is this the Zimbabwe you inherited from your fellow Ian Smith? Is this the liberation you made us help you with? Is this the reason why thousands of our brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers died for? Is this the country your child died for, so that you will make us your prisoners? Don’t you feel ashamed with what you have done to us? Do you have a heart, Robert? Are you human, Robert? What makes you wake up everyday? How do you confront the wounds you have caused on your fellow countrymen and the country you so loved? Why do you want to continue hurting us? What have we done to you to deserve this anger you have on us? Are you not tired of hearing every child crying your name, every man and woman mourning by your name, every old man and woman mourning under your thumb? How do you lie to yourself everyday that the people still love you? Anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, inferiority and superiority complexes are acts of powerlessness, and are painful, Robert. You feel unworthy of us, Robert. You know you are flawed and cannot be fixed. You want to be loved but feel unlovable. You want to love us but feel that you incapable of loving. No matter what you do, you still feel it’s not enough and that you are incurably inadequate, intrinsically and permanently flawed. You are afraid of us people. You are afraid we now see who you really are. You think without keeping trying to win us over to you, we will not want anything from you. This feeling of powerless in power is the most painful lesson on Earth school, Robert. A bland heart is patternless, Robert. It doesn’t smell right once you get a whiff of it. In what hell did you come from? Go back, Robert. Go back to where you came from!
And lately you have pushed out Emerson Mnangagwa. The explanations started flowing in your rallies, explanations that failed to explain, conclusions that failed to conclude. You made yourself into a Moses, the aura of psychic breath, in hot language; you told us he is a traitor, he is visiting N’angas to kill you off. That he was working against the country, that he wasn’t respecting you. Robert, what’s there to respect about you? Why do you want to be respected too much? Why are you forcing us to respect you? Why are you changing roads, airport, and calendar days to your name? Respect is earned, Robert! What respect have you earned from us when we are dying on queues, queuing for our hard-earned cash, dying  in streets trying to sell wares, fruits and vegetables for livelihood, dying in our homes of hunger, diseases, poverty; dying in foreign lands far away from home trying to eke out an existence, dying from stress, cardio-vascular diseases and depression, dying from lack of a horizon to migrate to, dying inside ourselves from lack of opportunities to grow, dying trying to remove you from power, dying trying to pay taxes so that your family would have more to loot from us, dying in shame that we destroyed the jewel of Africa with you, that Zimbabwe was! Like me, many things in Zimbabwe have tired from flowing. Are you not satisfied with the blood you have drunk from us. Uri chikwambo here, Robert? (Are you a Tokoloshi, Robert?). Why do you want to keep draining us, until when? We beg you, Robert, go! Leave us alone! We are tired of you, go! GO! GO! There is no ceiling above you anymore, but open skies full of changes, welcome it, embrace it, leave, GO!

I will continue to write these letters, just to move the air around, until you leave us. I will encourage every Zimbabwean, every friend of a Zimbabwean to join me in this journey. Let’s write letters and share them, until he leave us alone. Write these letters as a form of protest; share these letters with our families, friends, colleagues, and the world over. Post these letters on every platform you can. If you are afraid, use a pseudonym or that sort of thing. Let’s now begin the healing process. It’s now or never!

I am the one you killed quietly, now speaking

NB
Please feel free to distribute this letter, repost it, read it, spread it all over the world. Ask the world to join us in our fight. Send me your letters to mwanaka@yahoo.com We will fight together, I will post them for you!
Chara chimwe hachitswanye inda (one finger doesn’t kill the lice)

Thank you, Ndinotenda, Ngiyabonga