I highly recommend the work of Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah for anyone wanting a refreshing, honest take on life, politics and everything in between.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe and Morgan Richard Tsvangirai held hands. Mugabe grinned. Tsvangirai grinned. Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara grinned. Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki grinned. They all grinned and were happy together. It is surreal, this orgy of grinning, this sudden, blinding flashing of teeth: barely a month ago the pictures of torture camps filled television and computer screens, photographs of burnt bodies illustrated the stories of horror from Zimbabwe.

She writes, in her recent sobering and though provoking piece on the Memorandum of Understanding and inter-party dialogue. On her blog, she recently published John Eppel’s short story – Boys will be boys – a truth is stranger than fiction account of the petty squabbling reportedly happening behind the scenes at the interparty negotiations.

We made the story available to our SMS subscribers recently, and one wrote in:

Well, if indeed it is true that the inter-party talks have degenerated into a war about mini-bars and who has the best rooms, then God help us. Why would we, claiming to represent the wishes of the people, stoop so low? The people back home sleep on rumbling empty stomachs and our leaders fight over the fat of the land. The people back home sleep in overcrowded one roomed shacks and yet our leaders see sense in fighting over who has the better room. The people back home only have darkness as their best view thanks to ZESA blackouts and our leaders haggle over who has a better view of the magnificent terrain. That is the sad reality about power. Once our leaders begin to taste good things as is the case now, there is no telling what lies ahead of us after these talks. The gloves are off and we now see the true colours of our erstwhile leaders. For them it’s about fame, glory, power, prestige, and money. I mean, does it matter to our leaders that people died for the cause of democracy? What are the families of the deceased meant to think when they hear that the democracy their loved ones died for is now the flip side of a coin that has “bedroom suites, minibars, topless waiters etc” on the other side? We have betrayed the martyrs of the struggle. Surely, they turn in their graves in regret.

God help us indeed.

This entry was posted on August 4th, 2008 at 8:25 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Elections 2008, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.