A case of more tombstones than milestones

A case of more tombstones than milestones

• Mugabe's Cheka is everywhere, defending the revolution

• The National Vision Document of Suspicious Verses

• Mkapa must deliver us from shadow of fist

• George Charamba: Mugabe's backward front man

• To be liberated from the liberators

• Just what is the meaning of change?

(READ MTHULISI'S PREVIOUS ARTICLES)

TREVOR Ncube is a crusading Zimbabwean journalist who despite his own flaws has risen to become a regional agent of freedom and resultantly, a thorn in the flesh for the parasitic group of "super patriots" in charge of our country.

All that he stands for and the culture of civil and passive resistance his papers have helped galvanise and come to symbolise stands in the way of this “locust class” which thrives on sheer propaganda.

He should, therefore, be mutated into a pillar of salt for daring glance at the back to expose the pitfalls of the path we have been forced to take.

Surprisingly, the incident in which the discredited Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede’s office attempted to strip him of his citizenship has been allowed to pass merely as water from the back of a duck. Yet there is no gainsaying that it is one incident as symbolic than any other so far this year.

Mudede’s futile attempt to render Ncube a persona non agrata was not just an attack on an individual’s civil liberties but a shocking assault on our collective conscience and an attempt to gag our common complaints.

Here was a willing servant of tyranny abusing his office to score points against agents of free speech on behalf of his master! President Mugabe’s rule is not about diversity and frank talk nor is it about Pan-Africanism. It is essentially about resentment for competition, individual competence and debate. It is about ending and not beginning -- a clear case of more tombstones (destruction) than milestones (achievements).

Mudede and those who have purchased into his ways feel offended when the other views are proffered. In the case of the RG, it all became a case of personal hatred, the resonance of what Sigmund Freud called Projection. Here was a man calling himself a patriot offering himself as a tool to destroy a fellow countryman and an African businessman!

No wonder the ID’s for Zimbabweans of foreign origin are written “Alien”. It will not be surprising to hear in future that Mudede himself is actually of a different tribe from either Mozambique or Zambia. The same goes with Mugabe’s troubled and bitter megaphone, George Charamba who calls Ncube “Aphiri” ignoring his own Malawian origins.

That President Mugabe is served by highly bigoted, philistine and tribalistic people like Charamba and Mudede is symbolic. It points to his murky ways which urgently call for reconciliation with modernity if we are to escape this paranoid Zimbabwe which places lids on fountains of creativity. Never should they have been allowed next to such positions in the first place.

Today, Zimbabwe refuses to accept that it has a whole bunch of Malawians and Zambians. They should all be whipped into the mainstream tribal inclinations. If they refuse they are called “Aphiri”, “MaBlantaya” of “Madedede”.

The Charambas and the Mudedes of this world will then jump forward with their “dangerometers and guiltoscopes” to point fingers at so and so just to hide their own origins. They become ultra Zimbabwe and super patriots.

Have we ever sat down to ask ourselves who the following people are exactly and where do they originate? Moses Chunga, Robson Sharuko, Lovemore Madhuku, Usman Misi, Stanely Ndunduma, Leonard Dembo, Brenna Msiska, Stephen Ndlovu, Wilfred Mugeyi, Ignatius Chombo, Mafinyani, Saidi, Pikirayi Dekedeke, Zuze, Lovemore Banda, Givemore Manuella etc etc?

Aren’t they of foreign origins? But just because we have had somebody kidnapping our freedoms we have retreated to imprison ourselves in narrower definitions of ourselves in total contrast to the universal ideals of global citizenry which feed into diversity and prosperity.

In such a scenario people become paranoid living in perpetual fear of the truth and find themselves in defence of false causes. They are forever fighting (fist waving) when there could be an easier route to solutions, via discourse.

Perhaps a good example is that of Sharuko, the Herald sports editor who only a few years back traced his origins to the Zulu Kingdom of the Nguni people. He gave an account of how his forefathers settled in Malawi, and finally in Zimbabwe.

Sensing that he would be then labeled either “Mu Zambezi’ or “Aphiri” he not only committed “verbicide” against Malawi calling it rundown (a country where his granny comes from) but he closed his account with a declaration that despite all that history he was “a hard Mashona man”!

Such a person then becomes ultra Zimbabwean and should pretend always that there are people out there who are out to tarnish his country’s image by destroying its football. He should then be a fully armed warrior exposing the “enemies” of “Dear Motherland” in order to prove to the master (Charamba) that he is not an “Aphiri” but is a patriot.

It doesn’t occur to him that he could actually be a disservice to Zimbabwean football himself. Like his master he thinks, always, that the wrong is committed
against him and his country and not by him.

When Ncube and others like him place a huge mirror in the park for us to see how we are stabbing ourselves, the grumblings reaches the high heavens and the language becomes that of “expelling” and “banning”.

The real “Aphiris” jump on to the stage beating the patriotic drums to a crescendo and unleashing all manner of totalitarian measures.

In such times, all those who think like Ncube should be “crushed” because “never ever” should they be allowed any space to air their un-patriotic views. At once Mugabe’s publicists tumble over one another in a scramble to be heard first.

Like the Zimbabwe Independent and the Standard, even Tekere’s account of history must be denounced because it presents Zimbabweans with reasons for our failures and a different brand of patriotism which is unacceptable to hiding senior “Aphiris” who are part of the “locust class” committed to unmatched looting and economic vandalism.

Mthulisi Mathuthu is a Zimbabwean journalist and New Zimbabwe.com columnist. Views expressed here are his own. He can be contacted at: thuthuma@yahoo.com
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