Who will hang the hangman?

Who will hang the hangman?

20 June 2003
(READ MTHULISI'S PREVIOUS ARTICLES)
WHEN they had brought the condemned prisoner before the gallows the hangman readied himself. Well-fed corpulent prison guards stood yonder giggling and hoping for the end of the hanging party so they could go and imbibe beer.

As the hangman - draped in a black tunic and a white head gear - drew closer, the tiny wiry condemned man clad in red prison garb began talking in a mourning voice. Touched, the hangman listened.

“Who are you sir? I remember a few years ago one Emmerson Mnangagwa telling the nation that the post of the hangman was vacant. When were you recruited? Will I be wrong to assume, that given this ruling aristocracy’s penchant for evil conduct and greediness you are one of their number? I suspect that you are a member of this “locust class” because if you were part of the common people you would not be willing to commit murder effecting death warrants signed by people who are murderers themselves.

I am not a murderer. Neither am I one to wish others unfair death. I am a simple man who drove a spear into a man’s chest to avert murder. Do you people really feel that I should have allowed that man to tress-pass in my home wielding an axe threatening to kill me claiming that I was against the so-called Third Chimurenga and I was a supporter of the white minority?

That man was about to commit murder and I made a pre-emptive dash. Yet here I am now being called a murderer. Say now Mr hangman what moral ground do you have for hanging me effecting a death warrant signed by a violent and illegitimate tyrant who stole an election? A tyrant who should be facing the gallows himself for sanctioning murder and sustaining his rule through terror and deceit?

Isn’t it that your duty underpinned by the society’s desire for a civil life free from immoral and inhuman conduct? If so how do you justify your closing that noose around a neck of a man regarded by society at large as a hero and loathed by a few looters as a thorn in the flesh?

"Who, in a civilised society is more dangerous between a leader whose rule is kept on by bloodletting, terror and murder; and one whose misdeeds feed mainly from the unfortunate painful conditions created by that rule? "

MTHULISI MATHUTHU

The people who deserve to be hanged are in the offices. They are in the cathedrals anointing and blessing murderers. They are not in the prisons today. Now and then they are flying out on shopping trips to South Africa, Singapore and so on.

Hanging Chidumo, Chauke and so on will not clean the obvious blot on your copybook - a reminder to the world that this is, whether in hell or heaven, a regime that will be remembered for creating more graves than houses it has built for its purported people since 1980.

Who, in a civilised society is more dangerous between a leader whose rule is kept on by bloodletting, terror and murder; and one whose misdeeds feed mainly from the unfortunate painful conditions created by that rule?

How ironic it is to stand before the reality that a pathetic peripheral commoner in the village will be the symbol of resistance to a vast machinery of repression that pulverised thousands in the name of a revolution. It is for that reason that I see you as a man ready to commit murder for a few shekels of silver. It is a regime ready to rape, kill, and maim spread ignorance and deceit that is paying you. You will, I fear, have to hang the whole society because this whole horrendous act is supported by a few and abhorred by all.”

The prisoner concluded with a weeping hoarse voice. Disgusting white spume had begun collecting at the folds of his mouth. The hangman stood there dumbstruck. Already the prison guard and the priest and the director of prisons were roaming around him grumbling why he was taking time to put this yapping wretched murderer to final his sleep.

At once he stepped on the pedal and the chains rolled downwards and up. There was a distant heavy thud as the stone dead body fell into a deep pit lined with shining silver coated metal. The fat prison guards rushed forward whistling and dragging the body out.

They threw it into big and long zinc bowl so recklessly that it made a sound that might have done as far as their residence. The director of prisons, heavy with flesh lit his cigarette and beckoned the undertakers to prepare it for burial in some sordid God-forsaken place. All this was done with gusto. The Hangman wept.

He wept for the day when his country would return to the rule of law. He wept for the day when un-elected and malevolent ministers will not be allowed to personally draft fundamentally flawed laws aimed at criminalising the criticism of unlimited power and at brutalising negligence. A day when there will be few academics concocting eulogies for the ruling elite under the pretext of political analysis.

As their car turned into the tarmac leading them to their dwellings he began soul searching. For the first time it dawned on him that he was an employee of the villains hanging the weak and the hated instead of the guilty.
The idea of hanging others is built on falsification and bears within it elements of its own decay, he thought to himself borrowing from Leon Trotsky - thuthuma@yahoo.com
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Mthulisi Mathuthu is a Zimbabwean journalist working for The Zimbabwe Independent