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Chikerema: The man who wouldn't adapt
Bill Saidi
March 31, 2006

http://www.zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=253&cat=2

THE following story is based, more or less, on events that actually took place in Zimbabwe recently. The chief executive of a large corporation, who shall remain unnamed for obvious reasons, stole the gold watch he had recently bought for his wife for her birthday.

It was on a trip to Geneva, Switzerland, one of the perks he enjoyed as CEO. He stole it because he had not paid the rent for his girlfriend’s expensive flat in Borrowdale Brooke.

He had not paid the rent because he could not pay the school fees for his last-born’s private school outside Harare. That had happened because his company had slashed his school fee allowance because its end-of-year performance had been hit severely by a shortage of foreign currency to order vital spares for machinery. Production had been disastrous. He told his wife he had no idea what happened to her gold watch, which he said he had last seen on her wrist. To keep his personal finances on an even keel, he arranged for his driver to use the company’s Mercedes Benz C Class car for regular trips to Mutare – as a glorified kombi – while he took the bus back home from work.

Then he found a few hard-working vendors to sell cigarettes, sweets and the occasional twists of mbanje for him in The Avenues. He had them on a leash: they were all illegal immigrants.

At the end of two months, he discovered, his lifestyle had not declined drastically.

This, in a nutshell, is a portrait of the adaptability of the Zimbabwean to a crisis situation. Some people believe this is a salutary trait of the Zimbabwean character, this capacity to adapt to any crisis, be it political or economic.

Others believe otherwise. To these analysts, described by their critics as unpatriotic, this is the most fatal character flaw of the Zimbabwean.

This is the ability to "adapt oneself to new surroundings". In the present dark climate of an inflation rate hovering at 800 percent, the typical Zimbabwean is not concerned with the root cause of the economic crisis: a government so corrupt, so bereft of good ideas and so obsessed with hanging on to power it will do practically anything – including the creation of fictitious attempted coups and assassination plots.

Not since the late 1990s, when the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) staged the most successful stayaway against the war veterans levy have the people of Zimbabwe done what citizens do, routinely, whenever their governments try to foist on them unpopular measures.

Recently, the people of Thailand came out on to the streets to demand the resignation of their prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, over allegations of corruption.

In France, students and other young people came out on to the streets to protest against an employment measure proposed by the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin which they believed would disadvantage them.

In Brazil, the minister of finance, Antonio Palocci, resigned over claims that he had been involved in corruption. His resignation, it seems, was designed to forestall any public outcry against him.

This would be unheard of in Zimbabwe. Moreover, it is this lack of public outrage at corruption which has sabotaged any fight against graft in the country.

Zimbabweans may generally adapt themselves to any crisis because of a psychological character flaw, yet there are among them people who have, over the years, refused to adapt to the unpleasantness that has surrounded us since independence.

One such person was James Dambaza Chikerema, who died recently in the United States. He refused utterly to adapt to the acceptance of a ruling elite which was self-absorbed and steeped in cronyism.

Moreover, it was remarkable that the Zanu PF politburo accepted his demand not to be buried at Heroes Acre. Some of us knew years ago that Chikerema was so contemptuous of the "stigma" of Zanu PF heroism. He had vowed they would not bury him there.

In that respect, some of us were surprised that his long-time comrade-in-arms, the late George Nyandoro, was buried at the Heroes Acre. .He too had indicated loudly that he would be spiritually devastated if they buried him at that place in Warren Hills. He threatened, in one conversation, to haunt them as a ghost if they did.

Perhaps it is his ghost which has sent the Zimdollar plunging in real value. In the afterlife, people are alleged to possess prodigious powers over us earthlings.

James Chikerema was always critical of the government. Like many others, he despised its initial pursuit of Marxist-Leninist economic policies. Then there was its exclusivity, which amounted to a cronyism of sorts – in which only people who were members of Zany PF could gain access to everything which the government offered.

Chikerema lived his life outside Zanu PF’s influence, as did Nyandoro. There may be claims today that both men were beneficiaries of Zanu PF’s generosity. These may be difficult to sustain, unless they relate to the oxygen that sustained their lives.

The tendency by many Zimbabweans to seek ways of surviving in a climate created by political and economic incompetence has caused this country much of the tragic mess it is in today.

If the ZCTU, back in the late 1990s, had decided to fold its arms and let the government slap that hefty levy on the salaries and wages of workers, there is no telling what other heinous measures the government would have been encouraged to inflict on the people.

Since then, a number of organizations, including the ZCTU, have tried to stage protest demonstrations. Some have achieved a measure of success, but in general they have not achieved the effect of the ZCTU stayaway.

The accusation has been made that, in essence, Zimbabweans lack the political spine to confront Zanu PF head-on, that this government has since 1980 demonstrated its willingness and ability to shoot to kill if challenged as robustly as it was in the ZCTU stayaway.

In this context, it is nothing less than spectacular that some of the most successful demonstrations have been staged by women, specifically the feisty members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). Their most recent one was against inflation and the soaring cost of living, disrupted by the police in a manner that outraged many people, even members of Zanu PF women’s league.

Lovemore Madhuku and his National Constitutional Assembly have staged a number of marches, all of them invariably disrupted by baton-wielding riot police. Most such demonstrations are inhibited, from the beginning, by the provisions of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA).

Along with the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), this law was designed to deny democratic space to any citizens with a contrary political stance to that of Zanu PF.

As long as they exist, it is difficult to believe that any organization in the world could trust the government of President Robert Mugabe to be sincere in its creation of a human rights commission.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 has Article 19,which deals specifically with the freedom of the press. There is no way that any UN agency could interpret a human rights commission proposed in Zimbabwe as being in compliance with its provisions as long as there are these two laws on the statute books.

The UN must know by now that what the government of President Mugabe expresses publicly as its intention does not necessarily translate exactly into the action it takes.

There were useful lessons over Operation Murambatsvina. We now know that the military was heavily involved in this dirty exercise. The purpose was clear: to strike the fear of God into the hearts of any who resisted the attempt to move them.

In any case, the UN would be well-advised to revisit the aftermath of Operation Restore Order before heaping any praises on the intention of the government to introduce a human rights commission.

They too must learn not to adapt to conditions created by the same government which tried to convince its people it was back in the good graces of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) when it still owed that institution US$119 million.

In short, this is a government which is not to be trusted. James Chikerema knew this and refused to be hoodwinked into being made a Zanu PF hero. Who knows? Perhaps a little voice told him such an "honour" would guarantee he would not enter Heaven.

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