Tendai Ruben Mbofana EUPHEMISMS have been with us for as long as language has existed — from the time humans began communicating with each other through speech.
As the art of language advanced, the use of euphemisms — as a tactical way to express something in a more acceptable, and oftentimes in order to hide adverse gravity — also became more sophisticated.
How many times have some unemployed person said he was “in-between jobs”, or someone broke claimed to be “financially constrained”?
We have witnessed a similar trend in other facets of life — with prostitutes being referred to as “commercial sex workers”, or dying being described as “passing away”.
Zimbabwe has not been left out — with the government playing a leading role in employing euphemisms to hide its perennial failure to fulfil its promises to uplift the citizenry’s lives, and attaining a middle income economy.
How else can we describe a ruling establishment that comes into power promising “castles in the air” — more specifically, the current crop that grabbed power through a military coup d’etat in November 2017 — touting themselves as a “new dispensation”, regardless of the fact that these are the same faces we have seen in leadership since Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980?
Did they not proclaim themselves as “hitting the ground running” — promising to quickly stabilise the economy (specifically, after the ill-considered reintroduction of the local currency), vowing to construct 1,5 million houses before 2023 (at an average rate of 821 houses per day), opening Zimbabwe for business (with assurances of millions of well-paying jobs, especially for the youth)?
Yet, is the local currency — which was at one point viewed as the “strongest in the region” — arguably the weakest not only in the region, but also on the continent . . . whose value has been nosediving at a frightening speed, even at the questionable State-run foreign currency auction?
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Are Zimbabweans not poorer than what they were four years ago when the so-called Second Republic came into office — with over 7,9 million people, (more than half the population) being classified as extremely poor (earning less than US$1,90 per day, according to the UN and World Bank), and more than 75% living under the poverty datum line?
Did civil servants — who earned an average of US$540 in 2018 — not hopelessly watch their salaries being callously reduced to less than US$200 — a catastrophe that also befell the rest of the employed, and those operating private businesses, whose savings and earnings were wiped out overnight?
Therefore, when the ruling elite loudly proclaims that it is “building the country brick-by-brick” — what does that actually mean?
Why have they changed from “hitting the ground running” and promises to construct nearly a thousand houses a day, and assurances (repeated every year since 2019) to stabilise the local currency and harness inflation to “building brick-by-brick”?
Are these statements not poles apart — and, can even be characterised as contradictory?
One cannot claim to be sprinting and suddenly change, and say he is simply taking a stroll.
Which of the two is the truth?
That is why this whole “building the country brick-by-brick” is nothing more than a sick euphemism intended to hide dismal failures — while packaging it as some slow progress, but progress all the same.
Let us be frank with each other as a nation — we are not progressing.
As a matter of fact, if there was any discernable movement, it was backwards.
How else can we describe someone who earned US$540 in 2018, now receive less than US$200?
Can this ever be viewed as “building brick-by-brick” — even if one wants to be creative with the English language?
It would have been more believable had those in power called it “demolishing the country brick-by-brick” — which I have often referred to, “wall-by-wall destruction”.
The government should stop hiding behind a finger in its shameful attempt at deceiving the citizenry.
