By Cyprian M Ndawana DEAR President Emmerson Mnangagwa,
Your Excellency, if the spirit of Mbuya Nehanda was ever potent, as we are made to understand, her effectualities could have long been self-evident. There could be merriment throughout the country. Citizens could be healthy and wealthy; well fed like a butcherman’s dog.
As I see it, Zimbabwe could be the peaceful Promised Land, truly open for business; flowing with milk and honey. She could be abounding with opportunities.
Essentially, she could be a bustling hub, the regional breadbasket; a society of all cheers and no tears nor fears.
There could be prosperity, with none whatsoever weighed down by incapacitation. All in all, harmonious co-existence could be the norm. Duly, the angel of hope, like the Good Samaritan, could be selflessly handy to all and sundry, with no underlying political motives.
Those who perished in the gruesome State-sanctioned assaults of citizens during the August 1, 2018 and January 14-16, 2019 protests could have been spared their fate.
There could be credible evidence of a nation with a well and truly listening President, who is soft as wool, in word and deed.
Your Excellency, granted, the said spirit of Nehanda could not have waited to be summoned, as one Zanu PF guru alluded to recently. Given how citizens are being pounded by the socio-economic woes, her spirit could have been foreboding. It could have detected the sly beneath the said Vision 2030.
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With all due respect, his utterances are a delusion of the worst kind. They are dangerous even to the propounder. They place him in harm’s way that his world view is shaped by a fossil mindset. I would never ask him to fetch a knife for me. His belief in stone age is perilous.
Ordinarily, everyone is entitled to their belief systems. It is the hallmark of democracy that people have the freewill to choose as they please. Yet, what agitates me is the spectre of having my welfare decided by one who is held sway by a spirit medium.
It sent cold shivers down my spine that the proponent of the antiquity belief is a member of the uppermost rulership circle, the politburo. He seats together with you around the high table where discussions and decisions for the country are held and ultimately made.
His remarks were uttered on the backdrop of an anticipation of continuation of the targeted sanctions imposed on some individuals and companies by the United States (US). Yet, the sanctions against gross human rights violations date back to 2002.
The politburo member unleashed wrathful unpleasantaries on two prominent opposition leaders, accusing them of serving interests of the US. It was in this context of anger that he spewed declaratively that the duo would not rule Zimbabwe, as the spirit of Nehanda would not allow them.
Yet, the human rights transgressions are apparently a carried forward modus operandi of governance from the deposed late former President Robert Mugabe’s time. Evidently, the so-called new dispensation is as stone-hearted as the one it dethroned. It delights at pulling the trigger.
Its repressive apparatus gunned down six people in Harare in August 2018, barely a year after staging a coup against Mugabe. It went on to replicate its brute force the following year, claiming many lives of unarmed citizens protesting the deteriorating living conditions in the country.
Your Excellency, if the Nehanda spirit was anything to hedge on, it could have influenced the readmission of Zimbabwe into the Commonwealth club. Given that the application has been accumulating dust since May 15, 2018, the hype on the spirit is merely much ado about nothing.
It amounts to a smack in the face of the said engagement and re-engagement efforts. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Kigali, Rwanda, recently left Zimbabwe out in the cold. Yet, it resolved to admit former French colonies, Gabon and Togo to the league.
It is darned that while your Presidency was still in its infancy, the military was decidely unleashed on citizens, not once, but twice. Essentially, the aggression which impels the pulling of the trigger on unarmed citizens falls markedly short of democratic tenets.
Given the wanton disregard for the sanctity of life, your aggression is, indeed, your accuser. It warrants an extension of imposition of targeted sanctions. Also, it rightfully follows that your regime is blacklisted from accessing loans from the European Union (EU) institutions.
As I see it, your government has habitually been on warpath with the essence of good governance, much to the annoyance of even the spirit of Nehanda. Methinks the spirit is rightly outraged and restive over the unremitting clampdown on democratic space.
Your Excellency, with the opposition activists subjected to lengthy pretrial detentions, the country is, indeed, sundered by governmental intolerance to divergence. Oftentimes, your public utterances are by and large a threat to democracy, unfit of a Head of State. They incite violence.
Your Excellency, your declaration that the opposition will never rule Zimbabwe was despotic in word and spirit. It was gross ignorance on yourself to claim that your party, Zanu PF, is the sole custodian of the country’s liberation history.
It staggers the mind that you went off tangent with the basics of guerilla warfare. It is elementary knowledge that it succeeds on equal participation of the masses. It invites scorn and ridicule to your credentials that you ascribe exclusive liberation history to your party.
Yet, villagers were equal partners in the execution of the liberation war. It is grievous to the teachings of the famed revolutionary strategist, Mao Tse Tung, who postulated that is was imperative for guerilla fighters to establish synergy with the masses for the war to succeed.
He essentially advocated the analogy of fish and water, saying as fish cannot survive out of water, so is a guerilla without the support of water. Duly, truth can never be so camouflaged that its essence can be concealed.
Methinks the spirit of Nehanda, if at all it was ever of essence, is altogether disappointed by your rulership. It cannot be at peace when you declare the death sentence on the secessionist party leadership for its beliefs, denouncing it as demon possessed.
It probably for its annoyances that the anticipated outpouring of tourists to her monument at the heart of Harare city is all but a no-show. A sizeable number of citizens deem driving past the perched statue as loathsome, like bowing down to the false prophet, Baal.
As I see it, there is a conspicuous nothingness in the said newness of the so-called new dispensation. Actually, who needs an instigator for imposition of sanctions when your perpetual aggression is an untoward transgression of basic freedoms of expression?
Methinks the Nehanda spirit subscribes to the voice of conscience calling for reforms. It is grieving over your obsession with oppression. Your Excellency, Zimbabwe became a republic, once and for all, at independence. Thereafter, talk of second republic is ludicrous.
