As the lion limps wounded, every hunter in the park takes aim, mostly hoping, but increasingly expecting to make the kill.
Fambai Ngirande
Week after week and almost daily, a different group takes to the streets to register their discontent with the deplorable state of affairs in Zimbabwe, inspired by the undivided cause of betterment, that is: to eat, live, work, trade, take care of children and enjoy life better.
And for this cause, the masses that the system has always considered to be passive have now discovered their voice and taken centre stage in what is no doubt a season of discontent.
The simmering under-current of anger has now burst at the seams, erupting onto the streets and in the process, uniting the poor, marginalised, dispossessed, and frustrated or basically, the common majority in a unanimous cry for an urgent change of course. It’s difficult to say whether this shall result in “the” season of discontent — the one that shall usher in a new dispensation — but what remains clear is that whether for better or for worse, Zimbabweans shall never be the same again. Everywhere you turn, there is a palpable sense that the mighty system of old is no longer the same.
Distracted by years of internal fighting and stretched to the limit by multiple crises requiring the attentions of the kind of coherent leadership that it cannot muster, the system is getting overwhelmed by the outpouring of what was for years a latent disquiet.
Its default solutions of violent repression, propaganda and handouts no longer suffice to address the clamour for real solutions to real problems.
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Not that the system is not trying, but this decline seems beyond their best efforts.
Attempts at an internal remedy to rid the party of the fractious factionalism and rampant corruption that ravishes it from the inside have, in spite of all the huffing and puffing, exposed the reality that at the core of the nation and the party’s problems is failed leadership.
And that is the failure of the present leadership to renew itself, respond to people’s problems and provide solutions. Likewise, attempts at seeking external remedies by getting help from East or West have failed to address the suffering of most Zimbabweans outside of the rich and politically-connected few.
Very few outsiders are willing to invest on or aid a country that is self-evidently on the brink.
The system can neither be helped nor can it help itself. Its accelerated implosion over the past few months bears the stench of death or, at least, the signs of an imminent collapse.
Few know this more than the motley coalition of vendors and the young people hustling in the streets of Harare. Daily struggles with an inherently violent and repressive system have taught them skills in militant resistance currently being showcased in the increasingly regular street skirmishes with the system’s riot police.
From Zanuist degrees in violence they have earned diplomas in resistance. As new crises (cash shortages etc.) escalate the accustomed ones (mass unemployment, poor social service delivery etc.), there is no mistaking the inadequacy of the system’s proposed solutions like ZimAsset or its default mode of operation like violence, propaganda and blaming sanctions.
Many have lost confidence in both the system’s proposed solutions and its mode of operation. The tables have now turned.
A people formally consigned to victimhood has discovered a way to get heard.
Barely a day after presenting its top securocrats to read out the riot act ferociously threatening stern action against rioters, the streets of Harare are once again ablaze.
As market stalls burnt in central Harare, some youths could be observed riding on the outside of high speed kombis precariously hanging on with admirable dexterity.
Belying this dexterity is an attitude that is at once defiant and unorthodox.
They have learnt over countless running battles with the system’s agents of repression that their survival rests in defiance, in refusing to allow goods to get confiscated, in refusing to pay undue fines, in refusing to be victimised.
Now they seek something apart from the usual excuses. They seek something more substantive. They seek to be heard, to be given a fair shot at a better future and to be treated with dignity.
No longer shall they be cowed by propagandist headlines or baton sticks.
Few can predict the end game. The system’s ability to clamp down and repress will possibly stem this tide through untold violence However, in this moment of reckoning, I pray that the system will forgo its impulse to yield a police State and engage all citizens and their leaders in a constructive conversation about rebuilding the nation.
Fambai Ngirande writes what he likes
