THE NGO NETWORK ALLIANCE PROJECT - an online community for Zimbabwean activists  
 View archive by sector
 
 
    HOME THE PROJECT DIRECTORYJOINARCHIVESEARCH E:ACTIVISMBLOGSMSFREEDOM FONELINKS CONTACT US
 

 


Back to Index

Locals in Diaspora - missing link in new struggle
Masola Wa Dabudabu, The Standard (Zimbabwe)
February 17, 2008

http://www.thezimbabwestandard.com/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=21&id=8347&siteid=1

In history, we learnt how, in one way or the other, the Munhumutapa dynasty managed to have their citadel of Great Zimbabwe turn into ruins. Now in our time, in front of our glaring eyes and with our silent approval, we have witnessed RGM committing a grand murder of our country. We have witnessed Zimbabwe, a great country turn into a great ruin.

Zimbabwe is no more; yet more sadly; some Zimbabweans went down and continue to go down with her!

In this piece, I dedicate a special moment to all those who have since died in pursuit of emancipation from RGM-s crippling tyranny. May their courageous souls rest in eternal peace! Let it be boldly told that their blood; drained from their veins by RGM-s goons and Zanu PF dim-wits; was not shed in vain.

They all died in pursuit of the shared values of freedom and we still yearn for freedom! We long for liberty. We still dream the dreams our fore-fathers dreamt during the days of slavery. We still face the same nightmares our great-grandfathers experienced during colonialism. The suffering is unbearable.

Our voices long to sing without being fettered and our wounded bodies long to be cleansed of their festered scars. We profoundly recognise that liberty; the absence of coercion; is an expensive commodity for anyone to beget and to perpetually behold.

When we got independence, we thought and felt as if we had achieved liberty. It was an ephemeral imagination; a crazed delusion. Now we all realise that the essence of liberty appears to be perpetually gone!

Notwithstanding our current predicament; I shall still repeat the dedication to those who have so far perished in pursuit of genuine liberty from inhumanity such as the one exercised by RGM on the people of Zimbabwe.

May their courageous souls rest in eternal peace.

And now to those who as yet have managed to survive the onslaught on the people; greetings from the Diaspora!

Greeting you from the Diaspora conjures memories of neglect of national duty on the part of the people in the Diaspora. In brief, I have employed the term Diaspora as collective reference to Zimbabweans who find themselves displaced from their beloved motherland by the current turmoil in Zimbabwe .

I particularly resent referring to Zanu PF sponsored tourists (or terrorists if it tickles your fancy) who throng most western countries as part of the Diaspora. (I hope I do not incur the wrath and might of His Eminence The Police Commissioner-General Chihuri who sadly had his not so brilliant offspring shown the way from Brisbane to Harare ).

I digress!
Anyhow, we find ourselves separated from our country due to RGM-s insidious handling of the country-s socio-economic and socio-political affairs. In our hearts, we hold a hope; at least an evocative desire to be able to one day return to a Zimbabwe that hopefully would be in a manageable state.

If it makes those who have to face the injustices, the evil, the wickedness, the tyranny, the prejudice, the totalitarianism and the horror feel better; I shall let it be known that life in the Diaspora is not all sweet smells and enchanting sounds!

As long as one is a Zimbabwean and not RGM-s crony, wherever one is and whatever one is doing; the signs of suffering and torment show on one-s weary face. The suffering shows on everyone! Meeting fellow Zimbabweans who consider RGM as an old man with repulsive manners and outright foolish policies is the most heart-rending moment in the Diaspora. Telling that the soul is tormented becomes as easy as ABC.

Perhaps I should be allowed to graphically describe a typical Zimbabwean in the Diaspora; usually rotund, fat, over-fed, stout, plump, corpulent, fleshy, podgy, meaty, chubby, obese, big, huge, enormous and so on but lacking in confidence. The confidence has been eroded by RGM-s despotic tendencies back home. Their spirits; instead of growing proportionally to the individuals- weight gain; are diminishing!

Zimbabweans in the Diaspora walk with bent heads as they project souls in anguish, like oxen that have no means to express their sexuality. Most Zimbabweans who found themselves turned into peasant farmers over night, by dint of fortune for some and a dint of misfortune for others, will recall how an ox is renowned for providing the power that is required of it as a beast of burden but fails to deliver the vital components for perpetuating the genus.

With due respect to family values; Zimbabweans in the Diaspora are like oxen that have had their aspirations to reproduce young ones of their kind dashed by the emasculating effect of the castrating equipment. In oxen, testosterone refuses to kick in to accentuate and to promote the development and maintenance of male sex characteristics.

Again, with respect to Zimbabweans, especially the cowardly ones in the Diaspora, our manhood has been reduced to nothing. We are neuters whose only strength lies in docile compliance even to instructions to self-destruct. We are hopeless in our spirits. We are dead weight in the struggle for emancipation.

We are people who can only talk of a nation that was once proud and envied by all of Africa and beyond. We have nothing to say in our defence. We have failed our countrymen in the fight for freedom from autocracy.

RGM derives sadistic pleasure from our state of limbo. He feeds on our lack of zest to exercise a satanic stranglehold on the bloody reigns of power. The effect of RGM-s hold on the people-s collective manhood; albeit remote; is debilitating. For most of us in the Diaspora, the results of RGM-s misrule leave us in awe dismay as we are fully knowledgeable that we cannot do anything to help.

At RGM-s behest, Zimbabwe-s economy has ground to a screeching halt. Zimbabweans in the Diaspora have removed themselves from Zimbabwe-s political formula and as a result have lost the opportunity to stand up and be counted as people with esteem.

We are hopeless; helpless and hapless! I salute those who genuinely soldier on from the cauldron itself. It is my sincere hope that their gallantry will be rewarded during their life-times.

When I see the hopelessness and the helplessness of the situation, tears roll on my cheeks. I look back with envy on the men and women who gave up their lives during the people-s gallant fight against Ian Smith-s hegemony that had been born out of UDI. In the revised list, RGM is not included as he has since desecrated the sanctity of the struggle! We now make him out as a manipulative coward who relied more on crook than on hook to usurp the results of a concerted collective effort.

Zimbabweans should not weep forever as we might become the notorious weeping stock of the world. Let us weep no more but rather crack the whip. Together we can weave a whip to lash at RGM-s wicked flesh. Perhaps when the tears of weeping roll no more; the crackling sounds of the whip go silent; the death-telling whines of our children die down and the chickens truly come home to roost; the milk and the honey will start to flow.

What really matters in Zimbabwe today is not RGM but it is the people. RGM has removed himself from the realm of reality. He is now a devil-s angel. Perhaps RGM should change his name to RLM; the L signifying his new role of the devil Lucifer!

I cry for mercy.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP