There is lingering talk about forgiveness, healing, truth and reconciliation, all centred around the violent nature of politics that has defined Zimbabwe’s elections especially in the past decade. This politically-motivated violence has been widely documented with people whose homes were burnt, their families killed during orgies of violence rightly complaining that the perpetrators are still walking the length and breadth of the scorched as free men.

As the country approaches another election within the next two years, the violence that has come to characterise political campaigns is already being reported, this time inspired by the constitution outreach programme, and this without any efforts having made to “make peace” with aggrieved victims of past political violence. It is within that scope that this country has placed itself on the path of cyclical violence with perpetrators rightly knowing that nothing will happen to them. After all it is quite straight forward: if you go unpunished for a perceived crime, what will stop you from repeating it? Talk about literally getting away with murder, Zimbabwe presents scholars with innumerable case examples! And we have seen it since 1980 anyway with the Gukurahundi massacres as known architects and the foot soldiers f the troubles have never been taken to task about their role.

Issues around forgiveness and healing are likely to elude us as long as there is no political commitment on the part the leaders who presided over the killing and torture of innocents, and we are guaranteed that angry emotions will be part of our individual and collective psyche for a long time to come. I listened to a man who all along had been enjoying his beer until someone muttered something about the futility of a truth and reconciliation commission and something about how the dead must be left to bury the dead. The man literally wept, saying he never knew his father as he was killed during Gukurahundi and – while he had been enjoying the beer among them – said how much he hated the Shona. Everyone went silent, for how would anyone pacify a man who has so much anger in him? This is a guy who walks and talks each day as if everything is normal but deep there hidden from the rest of us, he harbours and carries such hate and hurt.

This becomes a strong case for the open discussion of what evil has been spawned by political violence and the need for a truth and reconciliation commission so people can move on with their lives. Yet some people in their wisdom think the past can take care of itself by natural processes of time and have been arrogant to calls for a naming and shaming of people behind the raping and killing of wives and mothers since independence. The question for many is that what really can be expected from the people who are accused of heinous political crime and still control state apparatus that would in essence be in charge of letting the law take its course? So does the nation wait for that epoch when they are no longer in government and then they are tracked and shot down like rapid dogs?

But then some will argue that then this goes against the principles of restorative justice but conform to the dictates of vengeance instead, thus justice must be delivered in the here and now so that victims like the man cited above may know peace in their hearts. African politicians have tended to exhibit traits that seek to place them above the moral barometer of normal beings as they use both illiterates and literati to commit the basest crimes, but turn and say the charges are all conspiracies by political opponents: Charles Taylor, Mobutu, Idi Dada Amin, Baby Doc Duvalier – all their stories read the same and the tragedy is that even as we journey into the 21st century, we find ourselves having to make the same excuses made by these evil black brothers. It is invariably always someone else who is not power who is blamed for the atrocities! But with the nature of Zimbabwe’s politics whose popularity contests have largely been defined by clubs and cudgels as weapons of persuasion, we are no doubt in for another round of calls for national healing after lives have already been lost when all this can be averted by heeding the calls for restorative justice.

For all his arrogance
Damn! He’s got a huge white chip over his shoulder
For all his English erudition
Damn! He got it in not-so-splendid isolation
Many years in a penal institution
Many years later he seeks mental emancipation
For all his readiness to spew diatribes
Damn! How come we keep listening?
For all his claim to moral rectitude
Blimey! The man neither drinks nor smokes
Damn! For all his Saville Row suits
He ain’t debonair
But he dresses in garb worth enough to feed Africa
How now, what do you know?
For all his affected intellectual glow
He does not comb his hair
Silly old man

There is a certain class of people that has always existed among Africa’s urban populations ever since independence came to these shores and that sought to stand apart from the rest of the impoverished populations typical of urban Africa. Historians and critics point out that their attitudes, mannerisms and all that pretentious jazz was inherited from settler colonialists who set visible economic benchmarks of “the life” around material wealth. While it will be agreed that the settler and even the present day white man took economic empowerment and its attendant trappings as an entitlement never mind how it was acquired based on notions of racial superiority, the present post-independence Blackman has taken the possession of wealth and material trappings as something that has to be flaunted – also never mind how this was acquired – to ridiculous heights.  You only have to look at politicians to see how wealth among starving masses ought to be celebrated.

With the fall and fall of Zimbabwe’s economy, there emerged a class of people who blazed the trail as the nouveau riche making sure everyone was left in no doubt about what economic rungs they occupied in an otherwise economically wretched society with no wealth to speak of. For example, for these people, owning a car especially became a symbol of undisputed middle class trappings which defined their economic worth and they came to typify their ideal financially sound Alpha African male. Now, because that worth was being measured against the backdrop of other Zimbabweans singing the blues as they were caught up in an economic vortex that rendered yesteryear middle class’s paupers, it left no doubt then that they were better off despite their obvious intellectual paucity, as the envious mocked them. And they in turn equally and brutally mocked those claiming superior intellectual clout that their education had turned them into paupers. “We are buying teachers beer,” they would brag – bearing in mind of course that teachers once upon a time formed what were seen as Zimbabwe’s educated minds that could afford to buy houses, cars, beer and of the finest women – but not necessarily in that order. You can see them everywhere you look – deep pockets, shallow minds, others say rather bluntly.

Whether the flowing cash was thanks to remissions from friends and family in the Diaspora, it was – and actually still is – woe betide him who had no claim to a relative domiciled abroad as an economic refugee. But then came the global economic recession and the remissions thinned or slowed down, and the envious rubbed their hands in glee as the reality of being just an impoverished neighbourhood chump set in. However, as the country trudges along on its rather long road to its economic Damascus, there remain folks who still use rather dubious benchmarks as their economic barometers. Capitalism has always emphasised a work ethic that demands that you only get as much as you put in despite the inherent imbalances that have denied well-bodied and intellectually astute individuals to realise their full potential within that system. Yet you see a guy who still thinks in this day and age for example driving a car – any car – is a symbol of economic attainment, especially among peers who still “walk on the ground like lions” as they are fond of reminding the drooling class.

I saw a guy driving a literally rotten car behaving behind the wheel as if he was behind the “popemobile” feeling as haughty as the typical African who has recently picked some cash when others are wallowing in dire poverty. The neighbourhood guys are supposed to envy such “attainments” and you tend to wonder: is that what African aspirations have been reduced to by the economic hardships that have stalked us for so long? Get into a little cash, buy a car and no one is left in doubt, and this in a country where doctors, teachers, lawyers cannot afford cars and houses of their own!

The other day I saw another guy blasting real loud music from his car radio as he screeched to a halt outside a drinking spot. It was supposed to be some grand entrance – as if people care – as all eyes were turned on him who was polluting the air with such uninvited ruckus. The guy killed the engine but left the music blaring as he went in to buy the green beer imported from South Africa – another plebeian sign of financial clout – but when he came back and turned on the ignition so that no doubt he could screech and kick dust into the eyes of the drooling class, the vehicle refused to budge. What does the guy do? He is soon opening the bonnet “to fix” the problem. And it took him long enough for all to point and laugh!  When the drooling class has a laugh, be sure it lasts longest – literally.  Why think driving a dead car to the pub will mark you out as better off financially, the cynics ask.

Zimbabweans have over the years been forced by their unfortunate economic circumstances to flaunt wealth they do have as there no any culture of saving or investment. But they have their reasons after many lost their lifetime savings to insane inflation. Not many look into the future anymore and say, okay, I am going to invest in the stock market, in this or that enterprise but the cash in my pocket must be seen bulging in the here and now or else no one will know anyway that I have the cash. Others have been heard saying that they do not keep money in the bank because they are afraid the RBZ will wake up one day and just take it – yes, the masses believe their money is not safe after the RBZ was accused of sponsoring Zanu PF. So they now go on and buy rotten cars that become exhibits that they do not need relatives abroad to afford to drive. It is the same guy for whom buying a house, investing in real estate, building a nest egg fro the kids is a proposition that has no place in his order of things but seems to think sleeping in a car is fashionable!

These behaviours must be pondered over by every thinking man who must interrogate the circumstances that engendered the death of working class rungs.

How did the dollar die? What kind of people has its death spawned? A bunch of people with no aspirations beyond owning a car? That’s exactly why Zimbabweans who settle abroad become parodies when they are awestruck by possessions the natives have embraced as part of their daily routine not a sign of deep pockets.

Here the masses have been tempted to live on borrowed time imagining that the country’s economic woes have presented them with opportunities to have it made despite their painfully palpable intellectual want such that all things being fair, they contribute to the betterment of their country and fellow man. But then in a country where everyone seems to be dreaming of one day waking up a millionaire but without losing a sweat for it, it is expected that measurement of economic worth becomes that which does not obtain in countries like South Africa for example where driving a car is expected of every working man and not interpreted as a sign of anything – just a sign of having a decent job that’s all.

It was Christmas in the city of Bulawayo. However, the Christmas spirit was palpably absent as working men and women had very empty pockets. The kids well, their stomachs were just as empty.

“A mean old man whom you don’t know stole Christmas,” a father said after his hungry children asked him why he had not bought them rice and chicken and brand new clothes. As he spoke, he reached for a brown plastic container popularly known as a scud and downed the contents. The children followed his every move as he lifted the scud from the old table and to his visibly filthy mouth. Froth from the opaque beer stained his upper lip and, turning the back of his hand into a serviette, he wiped the froth filled filthy mouth.

“I’m drowning my sorrows,” the father said when the wife asked how come he could afford to buy a scud for himself but not a litre of Coca-cola for her and the kids.

“I cannot get drunk on Coca-cola,” the perpetually bitter and broke husband said, half to the wife and half to himself. He suddenly felt his head getting woozy. The scud was doing a terrific job taking him to a land where there were no ruling parties: just people minding their own business.

The wife wept. Four hungry little children all yet to reach their seventh birthday watched as the man they called papa took huge quaffs of opaque beer and wondered if this was Santa Claus’s idea of a merry Christmas.

Elsewhere in the same city, a woman screamed. The moon and the stars looked down without emotion. It was not the scream of unfettered festive ecstasy. The woman had bolted from a house in the high density neighbourhood semi-naked with a man with only his boxers on in hot pursuit. “I will kill you, you stupid cunt. Come back I’m not done with you,” the man yelled as the woman disappeared into the night, her bare breasts jiggling violently. But some place elsewhere Christmas bells jingled merrily. A night of passion gone terribly wrong? Perhaps, but the neighbourhood wasn’t bothered. Men, women and nubile virgins were too busy dancing the Christmas spirit away, their adrenalin being rushed by intolerable and intoxicating levels of alcohol, marijuana and all kinds of mind-altering and liver-cooking whiskies and vodkas bootlegged from South Africa.

Elsewhere more than 400 kilometres away in the capital city, an old man with a funny-looking moustache laughed at his own jokes as he entertained his young family. “Thanks-but-no-beer-and-cigarettes-here-we-are-God-fearing-people” was beautifully calligraphed for all visitors to the palatial home to see. The visitors had to take note or risk raising the venom of the old fool who otherwise loved to present himself an altar boy – and this being Christmas – as Santa Claus himself. Only this old man never kept a beard; just that funny-looking moustache. But everybody knew this man was no Santa. Satan maybe, but certainly not Santa.

On the dinner table were all kinds of weird foodstuff never seen and never to be seen by the cursing alcoholic in the opening paragraph. Some of the food remained untouched while some looked like it had only been nibbled at by very spoilt kids. It was obvious the laughing old man and his family had just finished having a Christmas meal fit for a king. Fit for a cruel man, the poor man who loved scuds to a fault cursed bitterly as he walked aimlessly in the dark night, not really looking forward to returning home to four hungry children and an angry wife.

“I just want to die,” the alcoholic said. “I just want to live forever,” the old man with a funny-looking moustached mused as he watched his children sitting in front of a big television screen screaming excitedly as they competed for championship in the latest Playstation their mother had brought them from one of her many shopping trips in the Far East.

“Life is good,” the old man said rather loudly. “What did you say?” asked the wife. “Nothing, nothing,” he waved her off lovingly as he stroked her shoulder. “Senile old fool,” the wife said in the secrecy of her heart.

Meanwhile, the screaming semi-naked woman ran blindly in the dark with the night breeze caressing her bare breasts. A few meters away, she could see three silhouette figures approaching. This was a period of the year when many township souls became nocturnal and there was virtually no fear of being mugged. Festive mood they called it. Thus it was that parents gave schoolboys and girls permission to gyrate provocatively at the discotheque held at the local community hall for that one night only throughout the year.

The bare breasted woman ran right into young men who were coming from the community hall and who had gulped one too many and decided to call it a night. Soon, she was pleading for help, going and on that there was a killer after her. “Please take me to the police station.” “Yeah sure,” the drunken boys readily offered. “What good Samaritans on Christmas eve. This sure is a Christian holiday,” she wept silently, grateful as one of the young men took off his jacket offering to cover her. “Wait,” one of them said. “Let’s pass through my place. I can get her one of my sister’s blouses.” “Great,” they all agreed, including the female. No report was made to the police that night. The three spent the night emptying their lust on the poor woman.

Meanwhile far, far away, the old man with a funny-looking moustache closed himself in the bathroom. He took two blue pills and hastily swallowed them. Feeling like a stallion, he joined his young wife in bed. He never saw Christmas. His heart stopped while he was on top of his wife trying real hard to make her feel like a woman. When the cardiac attack set in, the wife had imagined the spasms to be an orgasm.

And thus it was that it became known as a Christmas to forget.

Empty pockets, empty minds, empty hopes

The trees standstill
Giant jacarandas
Flowering bougainvillaeas
Meander and strangle vleis
Leaves shake not
Under the shades
Men young and old
Play draughts
Plenty laughs
A great day for anything
Beer, banter, family and.
Yes sex

A great day for anything
Except…
Very empty pockets
Draughts, beer go hand in glove
After all, is this not December
The month of merriment
But what is Christmas without…
Yep, beer and sex

Can’t make love on an empty pocket
What to buy condoms with here in the pub, no?
What to buy food with for the mother of the house?
Can’t make love on an empty stomach, no?
The trees standstill
Clear sky
The rains have for a moment disappeared

A great day for anything?

Except this is my Christmas.
Empty pockets, empty minds, empty hopes

The arrogance of African politicians is legendary, and one can only point to the powerlessness of “we the people” to do anything to determine the course of national politics. The ballot has already proven to be a useless vehicle for change anyway as unelected men and woman still find their way into the corridors of power, perhaps that’s what has bred this unmitigated arrogance. Perhaps.

These politicians open their loud mouths, say whatever they want when criticised and get away with it, with “we the people” only cursing why and how the hell we allowed ourselves to have these arrogant men as government officials. Examples are too numerous to mention, but it got me thinking the other day when I read about Welshman Ncube calling his coalition partners from the MDC-T idiots or something to that effect, at least according to a SW Radio interview with Violet Gonda.

The issues bordered on what others in the coalition and indeed in the public arena perceive as deliberate stalling and endless postponements of meetings of GPA negotiations. Justifiably, the MDC-T felt the frustration of having meetings postponed and with Ncube and his MDC-M colleagues endlessly engaged in “national business” visiting “world capitals” thereby forcing the postponements. And then Ncube says as far as he is concerned, SADC did not put a deadline on the resolution of outstanding issues but rather provided a framework (according to his dictionary, he said) for the negotiators. All these allegations being levelled against the MDC-M are “nonsensical and idiotic,” Ncube suggests. “That is a creation of those who grandstand and who are masters of deception. There never was a SADC deadline. Those who want to believe there was, is their problem not mine. SADC provided a framework.”

It says a million things about what is wrong with this marriage of inconvenience where a coalition partner addresses his counterparts –primarily the PM who has raised some of the issues – as such and get away with it. It paints a graphic – and horrific – picture about the progress or the lack thereof with this albatross around our neck when we all know that all this gamesmanship – or feeble attempt at it – is only being perpetuated at the miserable expense of the ordinary man, woman and child who at the turn of the century had imagined a Zimbabwe with one political party to steer it to the prosperity we all deserve.

It is interesting that during one of the delays, the MDC-M negotiators were out of town on government business with one of Zanu PF negotiators at Chirundu border post. Cynics will argue that there you already had a meeting of negotiators though not official! Does it then come as a surprise then that we have a guy like Ncube simply dismissing with an epithet-filled tirade that which would only be expected from Zanu PF?

It would increasingly appear that MDC-T is waging a battle for a better and new Zimbabwe with both Zanu PF and MDC-M on the opposite corner, otherwise how else would we read such disturbing attitudes to the coalition from the same people who we expect to make this beast (GNU) work?  It takes us back to the arrogance of African politicians. A guy thinks because he is minister he is above reproach, forgetting that he has no claim over representing any constituency. Yet if there remains an absence of sincerity and nation-centric rapport among these coalition partners then we can bet Jacob Zuma will just be winking in the dark with these latest efforts to resolve the so-called outstanding issues and rescue the coalition from what the doomsayers say is an inevitable…well doom.

It is also interesting however that Zuma would be expected to read the riot act to Ncube and others despite the family ties that bind Mr. Ncube and Mr. Zuma. Is it not all a travesty? In a court of law no doubt Zuma would be called to recuse himself as mediator as he cannot be expected to objectively preside over this circus because of the Ncube factor. But then, “we the people” apparently have once again resigned ourselves to a situation where we leave our fate to the gods only because the men who should be steering this ship to placid waters render it a waste of time putting the “we the people” first.

- When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle – edmund burke, political philosopher – 1770.