Day full of drama at the shopping centre today after a group of soldiers were beaten and chased away from Intermarket bank by the military police earlier on. The selfish sods get their salaries all at once in hard cash back at their barracks, and they still want to jump the queues.

Then there was an accident on Enterprise road outside our office. An elderly woman was bumped by a blue Mercedes Benz whilst trying to cross the ever busy road. The loud screech of braking tyres and a thud drew people from their offices. The police were there in a blitz because Morris Depot is just round the corner. You’d think that with so many sophisticated looking people plus the Merc owner and the police gathered around, something would be done for the poor woman expeditiously. Although she showed no visible signs of hurt, she was clearly in shock and kept rubbing the side of her belly. She must have been hurt internally and from what I understand most accident victims die from the shock than the wounds.

The two policeman on the scene promptly got to work, one taking down a statement from the Merc owner, the other vacillating between alerting and diverting traffic and making some markings around the Merc. He had no chalk and ended up using pieces of red brick to do the job. Clearly no easy task.

Meanwhile the elderly woman sat quietly, only her eyes betrayed the pain she felt. If I didn’t know better I’d say she felt more uncomfortable from all the attention than from the pain she felt. More onlookers gathered around her, someone asked the others if she was all right, what happened and was the Merc driver speeding? Why did the foolish woman not cross the road at the traffic lights? She ought to thank her lucky stars a Merc hit her. There was an unspoken consensus that the woman was to blame. Accusatory eyes pierced at her all round.

There was also a mysterious lack of a sense of emergency; nobody bothered to ask why the woman wasn’t being rushed to hospital and when I did, I got the kind of astonished, irritated stares only a loud fart would elicit. There was lots of silence, eyes shifted momentarily to the Merc owner, and then everyone refocused their attention on the poor woman. Time was being wasted on trivialities; the one policeman continued with his show of taking a long statement while the Merc owner fidgeted with his cell phone. Dark sweat rings grew under his armpits. The people made him nervous so did the police. This was an emergency and all he needed to do was get the woman into his car and drive to the nearest hospital. But no, protocol and bureaucracy required that statements be taken, marks be established around the vehicle and papers be signed before any help could be afforded the ailing woman. Whoever said there is no rush in Africa has never been more precise.

This is exactly how it feels to be Zimbabwean of late. Africans stood by and waited for the ‘authorities’ to deliberate over the impasse in Zimbabwe. A lot of statements were issued while the rest of the world gawked as Zimbabwe burned. Did they perceive Zimbabwe was all right because she remained quiet? They assumed everything would be sorted in talks because the revered SADC was there. Whenever Khama or the late Mwanawasa – bless his soul – pointed out the emergency of the situation, they were hushed by silent stares. It was almost as if they were disturbing the silence in a movie theatre populated by voyeurs.

Shall it not baffle our children when they reflect on history, that SADC was there, so were the UN and the AU but Zimbabwe died while they all watched?

This entry was posted on November 21st, 2008 at 11:53 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.