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Quarantine
me
Rejoice
Ngwenya
January 17, 2012
In the circles
of Zimbabwean macho self-delusion, a 32-year-old man without a driver-s
license, passport, car, cell phone and house is labelled a "community
disgrace".
His weirdness
assumes cynical proportion if he is unmarried, attracting legitimate
spite as an object of shame.
He would deserve
quarantine, the sort of "punishment" Old Testament Jews
meted on lepers, not fit for human cohabitation!
This feeling
of "nothingness" overwhelmed me while traversing Zimbabwe-s
lush countryside during the just-ended holidays, reliving the experience
portrayed in Chika Onyeani-s iconic book Capitalist Nigger:
The Road to Success: A Spider Web Doctrine.
From the desolate
cattle sale pens of Plumtree, via the gravel "tarred"
roads of Bulawayo, through the dark streets of Harare to the abandoned
high-altitude resorts in Mutare - was an encounter with a dysfunctional
32-year-old "African Zimbabwean" country.
The extent of
infrastructural dilapidation on farms, roads and settlements left
me distraught, concurring with Onyeani there is something fundamentally
amiss with African eco-politics.
Call it the
resource curse, but I have legitimate reason to term it The Dictator-s
Malady - a recipe for development disaster imposed on us by a Robert
Mugabe-type, non-bio-degradable model of primitive autocracy.
We have been
left empty, abused, cursed and quarantined by a selfish ruling elite
with no interest in our welfare, only applying occult power spurred
on by an insatiable thirst for self-aggrandisement.
Thirty-two years
of "independence" have nothing to show for a once-sophisticated
rail network that lies derelict, rest facilities choking with wild
grass as vandalised road signs hang precariously.
Ghostly signs
of long-abandoned textile mills in Kadoma flap languidly in simmering
summer heat, like a set of a Western movie.
Rusty farm equipment
is strewn along the dusty trails of Selous as empty grain silos
of Norton aimlessly dominate the deep blue horizon.
Zimbabwe-s
$800 000 000 diamond deposits, world-class tourist wonders like
Victoria Falls, Great Zimbabwe Ruins and Hwange Game Reserve count
for naught as I drive in pitch darkness through electricity-less
Harare on New Year-s Eve.
Dry taps in
Ruwa and Marondera, empty Rusape shop windows plastered with old
newspapers shouting stale headlines on the demise of Air Zimbabwe
point to one thing:
Our country
was run down by a cabal of self-serving nationalist zealots who
had no morsel of a development conscience other than self-enrichment.
Writes Onyeani:
"We are a conquered race and it is utterly foolish for us
to believe that we are independent." For 32 years, Zanu PF
has deceived us, and now produces a victim-mentality menu that falsely
blames our demise on sanctions.
From Bromley
to Nyazura, the desperate faces of African women accosting my car
with tonnes of red tomatoes have it inscribed on their parched faces:
"We are
tired of listening to the same complaint, day in day out - sanctions
this, colonialism that. It-s getting us nowhere," Onyeani
would have said.
He may be criticised
for "relying on anecdotal rather than factual evidence",
but I bring you crude reality of the once majestic hillside roads
of Vumba now enveloped with overhanging trees and faded centre lines.
For once, Onyeani is right. Africans are nothing short of "whiners,
passive, economically illiterate, intellectually bankrupt and materialistic".
I drive into
the electricity-less parking lot of Leopard Rock Hotel, finally
switch off my car engine; close my eyes, soliloquise:
"There
is inextricable Siamese connection between 32 years of destructive
Zanu PF governance and my country-s state of desperation.
How have we left our country for so long to be trampled under this
one-man spell? We are pathetic losers, deserving political quarantine,
the sort of punishment Old Testament Jews meted on lepers."
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