Why are the bad guys always smiling in Zimbabwe?

TANONOKA JOSEPH WHANDE

The heart of the matter is that Mugabe has caged in every Zimbabwean, including himself.
Zimbabwe does not have a single free person, not even Mugabe himself.

First, there is mail from SWRadioAfrica listeners.
One of the letters caught my attention.
In the preceding week, I had said that I will not forgive Mugabe and his lieutenants, yet, as a Christian, I am compelled to forgive. I went on to say that if refusing to forgive Mugabe would send me to hell, then I was prepared so as to fight with Mugabe on equal terms while our behinds are on fire.
The writer said that I should not casually toss away the gift of good life that the Lord gave and prepared for me, here and in the hereafter, just to even scores with a fellow sinner. He implied that I was not thankful.
I agree.

I have always hoped that just because I have never murdered a soul, let alone thousands, my sins were less harmful than Mugabe’s sins.
But I concede that a sin is a sin.
I wrote back to this particular gentleman and told him that I try to live a life that, hopefully, will peacefully reunite me with my Maker in the hereafter because, I said, I have absolutely no intention to follow Robert Mugabe into hell.
I apologise to fellow Christians if I seemed to belittle my personal gift from God; it was not my intention.

However, please note that there is anger involved and there is fear that the good Lord might have abandoned us.
I cannot understand how evil can always triumph and how it can always smile when the good are defeated.
My country and my people have suffered so much for so long and they cry out to the Lord.
I love my Lord and I believe that what is happening to us is another example God sets for the world to see. We are the chosen ones but for our greatness to be appreciated, Mugabe has to be made to appear invincible.
Now, let me redirect my anger, like I was advised to do.

The late Marshal Munhumumwe was an unpretentious lyricist and musician.
His song, Shungu Hadziuraye, remains one of my farvourites.
He asks a question that we all want answered.
What kind of dream is this that we are living that teases us with life when we are dead?
But we are not dead yet, I say; we are just suffering in a hell of Robert Mugabe’s making, but a hell nevertheless.
But then, it is disturbingly quite clear that, to find and acquire our hopes, we have to be dead first.

True to Munhumumwe’s word, if our wishes could kill, none of us would be alive today, including Robert Mugabe himself.

In my Zimbabwe today, I am afraid to stay awake because I see that all the pain and humiliation is real.
In my Zimbabwe today, I am afraid to go to sleep because I dream of the things that my country and I should have been, only to wake up and find thousands have been chased or deserted our country because of home-grown cruelty.
I pinch myself and, yes, it is real. I am not even welcome back in my tattered country.
And then, with my eyes wide open, I dream of being free in my Zimbabwe today.

Today, even our wishes, our mere wishes, are full of pain because they seem so distant yet we have them between our earlobe and the pillow.
Why do I, an unfree person, dream of being free?
Because I am a Zimbabwean, for goodness sake and I should not be talking about the desire for freedom!
We, not Mugabe, freed Zimbabwe from the bondages of colonialism, a word I now feel sorry for because it is blamed for so much which it did not cause.
While we are at it, why did we fight at all since the same things we did not want are here again under another flag?

I dream of freedom only to wake up to find that I am under the care and protection of a foreign government, protecting me from my own government and president who, in some circles, is considered a hero although he long ago squandered that heroism.
My own government should be ashamed of themselves.
How many of its children are elsewhere just because they have been and continue to be persecuted by their own government?
I dream I am alive when I am dead. A man without freedom is dead. He can’t influence his immediacy or take care of his intentions.
What kind of dream is this that teases me with life?
I dream that I am dead and hopeless yet I am alive.

But I have a consolation. Dead people don’t dream.
If I am dreaming, it means that I am alive. And if I am alive, Zimbabwe expects something from me.

Mugabe, like me and everyone else, is a product of Zimbabwe and he is not the first citizen; the people are.
People talk about Mugabe destroying Zimbabwe but none of us talk about Mugabe destroying generations of young minds, the custodians of our tomorrow.
My compatriots, these are not rumblings of a dead person but of one who would prefer to be dead but who will fight to death to remain alive.

Dreaming means I am alive.
In my Zimbabwe today, I am afraid to stay awake because I see that all the pain and humiliation is real.
In my Zimbabwe today, I am afraid to go to sleep because I dream of the things that I should have been but then, when I do go to sleep, I wake up only to find myself a refugee in someone else’s country.
I have done no one any wrong yet they play with my name in vain.
I am said to have sold out but is it not true that Mugabe sold me out?
How can I sell something that neither belongs to me nor would ever be mine?
I am not Robert Mugabe who sells national assets as if they were his.

Even the war we fought, which is unlike any other on the continent of Africa and which Mugabe did not lead, is a paradigm of excellence in the execution of a war of liberation. Mugabe is jealous because he is not a founding father of ZANU, later christened ZANU-PF, nor did he establish the war effort. Selling a country is something that can only be done by people like Mugabe.
Zimbabwe disappeared and ceased to be ours on the day of Independence. Am I wrong to say that the only free people in Zimbabwe are Robert and Grace Mugabe?
Not even his children are free; there are many things that they dare not say. Jonathan Moyo is not free; he has to appear to be what he’d rather not be. Mnangagwa is not free; he is frustrated because he wants the presidency but there are things he’d rather not say.
No one is free and caged mammals are dangerous.

The only thing more disgusting than a wild animal in a cage is a Zimbabwean under Mugabe.
Let both go.
If you cage the wild animal, it is no longer an animal; you have stripped it of its identity.
If you oppress a Zimbabwean…well, there is always the devil to pay and Mugabe is doing just that. All that Mugabe has to do is to look at what is happening to him, never mind the country.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my compatriots, is the way it is today, Thursday September 4, 2008.