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Occupy
Seventh Street
Rejoice
Ngwenya
November 23, 2011
The phrase 'it-s
impossible- has dominion over dead people, only because they
cannot resurrect themselves in the absence of Jesus Christ. For
African Arabs, the reverse turns out to be proverbially true. Citizens
of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were given a choice between death and
oppression. They chose death, and like the Christian analogy of
crucifixion, they 'resurrected- to freedom. Thus those
going around spreading self denigrating propaganda that 'it-s
impossible- for Zimbabweans to [proverbially] Occupy Seventh
Street are on a frolic of self delusion.
I am not advocating
riotous, senselessly convoluted undemocratically anarchical anti-capitalist
type activism. Drumming, urinating, defecating and verbal slurs
as practiced at Wall Street, Oakland, Portland or Zuccotti Park
are several rungs below my threshold of life changing behaviour.
After all, in my country Zimbabwe, there is still residual respect
for capitalism. So far, it is the only system to have created wealth.
My point: only the dictates of a moral democratic order have for
the past 30 years compelled Zimbabweans to allow ZANU-PF to govern
this country. But all things - except eternal life -
come to an end. If facts have to be laid bare, President Robert
Mugabe-s popular mandate evaporated as far back as 1998. Since
then, Seventh Street tenancy has only been made possible by a raft
of coercive instruments. The time has now come - and it is a democratic
right - to trigger a constitutional process where the true
representatives of the people of Zimbabwe Occupy Seventh Street
[OSS].
What
we know is that the current whirlwind of 'occupations-
in the West, particularly Occupy Wall Street [OWS], has as much
to do with 'real- politics as 'Pentecostal entrepreneurship-
has to do with salvation. Wikipedia says Western protesters are
demanding more and better jobs, more equal distribution of income,
bank reform, and a reduction of the influence of corporations on
politics. They yearn for social and economic equality; detest corporate
greed, corruption and influence over government - particularly from
the financial services sector. Cries are against growing disparity
in wealth, and the absence of legal repercussions behind the recent
global financial crisis.
But to
assume that the sentiments of OWS cannot be comparable - at least
genetically - to OSS is limiting one-s imagination. Filmmaker
Michael Moore spoke in support of OWS saying, "They have tried
to take our democracy and turn it into a kleptocracy." The
tenants of Seventh Street are exclusive ruling in the confines of
Mr. Moore-s prophetic complaint. OWSers are demanding a new
world order where capitalism can take into account the human element
in allocating resources. If they are saying utopian socialism creates
and distributes wealth fairly, someone ought to wake them up from
a debilitating Marxist nightmare.
It was through
abuse of governance that Zimbabweans suffered from OWS-type malady
of banking crisis, hyper inflation, fuel, drug and food shortages.
We continue under the burden of human rights abuse, media suppression,
power outages, water shortages, unemployment, homelessness, potholes
and habitual violations of private property rights. For good reasons,
Zimbabweans are now wide awake. The Government
of National Unity has done well in pacifying our troubled spirits,
but it is not going to be long before we start agitating for real
change. If those comfortably lodging in the environs of Seventh
Street assume 'it-s impossible- for us to freely
beat a path to the polling station then entrench a perfectly liberal
democracy, they had better start voluntarily emerging from the proverbial
sewer.
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