Nelson Mandela’s birthday is at least a month away yet there has been so much fuss around it already, since March if memory serves me right. Some big bash where international musicians will perform is being planned, there is a campaign of sending him a text message and the proceeds go to charity or something like that blah blah. I like him a lot too, but I don’t want to talk about his birthday. I want to talk about what Christopher Hitchens unpacks as to why Mandela hasn’t spoken out against Mugabe. Anybody else notice? Such a deafening silence from Madiba, with all due respect. Not that it would make much of a difference, but if all the other elders are busy issuing statements and what not . . . They have even signed a petition that wouldn’t have been too bad even with a halfhearted signature from this great man everybody loves. Bev, Madiba one guy you forgot to mention who is also present at the party. How the hell does anybody have a party when their neighbor’s house is on fire? Well, those are probably just petty nigglings, just a wonder that’s all. We are all different.

Hitchens mentions that:

“I recently had the chance to speak to George Bizos, the heroic South African attorney who was Mandela’s lawyer in the bad old days and who more recently has also represented Morgan Tsvangirai, the much-persecuted leader of the Zimbabwean opposition. Why, I asked him, was his old comrade apparently toeing the scandalous line taken by President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress? Bizos gave me one answer that made me wince­that Mandela is now a very old man and another that made me wince again: that his doctors have advised him to avoid anything stressful. One has a bit more respect for the old lion than to imagine that he doesn’t know what’s happening in next-door Zimbabwe or to believe that he doesn’t understand what a huge difference the smallest word from him would make. It will be something of a tragedy if he ends his career on a note of such squalid compromise… It is the silence of Mandela, much more than anything else that bruises the soul. It appears to make a mockery of all the brave talk about international standards for human rights, about the need for internationalist solidarity and the brotherhood of man, and all that. There is perhaps only one person in the world who symbolizes that spirit, and he has chosen to betray it. Or is it possible, before the grisly travesty of the runoff of June 27, that the old lion will summon one last powerful growl?”

How about that? The guy is probably just avoiding stress. One would think he’d share this invaluable advice with his colleague right next door.

My boss and I were discussing the other day, how or what the idea is behind beating someone into (supposed) submission? How and why is it, that somebody can be motivated and paid to kill fellow citizens, yet remain no better off or even close to the chefs whose interests they serve? What makes anybody think that by burning my house, beating a piece of my buttock off or taking me to a reorientation base or even killing me, will make me vote for them? Doesn’t it just make sense that I’d be more bound to actually vote against you for beating me? Then a different school of thought is of the opinion that it actually works. Get beaten so bad and you wont want to risk that happening to you again. I don’t know. But what I do know is, from what she wrote in an email, a friend of mine is simply going to vote ZANU because:

I’m so scared sha, but sekuru for sure wont step down easily you think we gonna have war that’s what I’m afraid of the most. I didn’t come this far to die in war or to have my life turned upside down. I want my children to see what a beautiful country we have. I think for now all we have to do is pray and right now I’d rather Zanu won for the sake of peace and no war…

A lot of people are taking the old man’s threats seriously, and I don’t blame them, knowing what he’s capable of doing. Recently, he promised war if he lost the run-off. He didn’t mince words when he said, “We fought for this country, and a lot of blood was shed. We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint fight with a gun?” The warning came a day after he declared: “We are ready to go to war.”

This entry was posted on June 19th, 2008 at 11:04 am by Natasha Msonza and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.