Twenty years ago this month I married. Time is not a measure of bliss. We know. Thirty-two years of tyranny bred popular discontent.
Yet as a political activist, it’s not often that one gets in one brushstroke — a marriage anniversary and the mauling of Zanu PF by a now potent Sadc bulldog.
Agony of our oppressors on one’s anniversary is worthy of a Unesco seventh wonder accolade!
Thrity percent of marriages are vulnerable to dissipation in their first five years. I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize!
Being not the easiest of co-habitation characters, I have an insatiable desire for marital literature keeping my overblown ego under control. A Seventh Day Adventist colporteur added to my “how to” collection the title “Highly Effective Marriages” by family life counsellor Nancy Van.
She makes a compelling case on how men destroy marriages through ignorance of what makes wives tick.
I wish it was like that in politics — restore the rule of law, constitutionalism and respect for people’s choice — bingo — a perfect institution!
The book The Fear — The Last Days of Robert Mugabe by Zimbabwean journalist Peter Godwin grips me not on its articulate narration of Zanu PF’s June 2008 madness, but that my marriage has coincided with President Mugabe’s most rabid tyrannical misdemeanours since Gukurahundi! Zanu PF hijacked the entire 20 years of my marriage!
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My wife tolerates incorrigible commentaries on “what could have been for us” had Mugabe retired in 1999.
For every violent election I have voted in, every protest article written and every political conference I have attended in the last 20 years, I explain to her it was in honour of Zimbabweans traumatised by Mugabe’s brutal reign.
We differ in our perspectives, but for me, anything short of democratisation vigilante would be a big yawn.
Now that she accepts me as a rebel, I would wish the next 20 years of our marriage Zanu PF-free. That’s a distinct possibility.
But the 20-year question is: Is he finally prepared to abandon the trajectory of impunity and call it quits in 2013?
Discent Bajila writes: “Any self-respecting 88-year-old would have found reason to exit the political scene especially after spending more than three decades presiding over moments of madness, natural resource plunder . . .”
My anniversary month has been dramatic: Zanu PF mutant generals Trust Mugoba, Martin Chedondo and Douglas Nyikayaramba entrenching perpetuated cult worshipping; Aqualinah Katsande and Newton Kachepa of Mudzi allegedly opening the political murder account; Navanethem Pillay showing Mugabe the red card; his charm offensive to the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security yielding nothing but Michael “Sata-rical” thorns and thistles; former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor on a 50-year incarceration while a South African court successfully argues that Zanu PF cronies be prosecuted.
On any other day, this quantum of embarrassment would compel any dictatorship to abdicate but no, Zanu PF insists it’s still the “people’s choice”.
Mugabe’s propagandists continue spewing anti-democracy vitriol, accusing us of celebrating “pyrrhic” victory.
Their umbrage will not deter us, if not only to incense us into a Tahrir Square-like hallucination! As the fires of internal dissent are fanned by the so-called succession war, I take comfort in how the District Chaotic Committee elections will for once deliver the mortal blow to Zanu PF!
Big screen greats like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Will Smith, Angelina Jolie and Wesley Snipes have at one stage single-handedly apprehended fundamentalist lunatics holed up in some abandoned warehouse.
When the bad guy is cornered, the last words the villain would remember alive is something like: “Zanu PF, this is Captain Democracy. You’re completely surrounded. Come out with your hands up and save your life!”
